"Likewise, we know exactly what this line of code does: a = b + 5;" It could easily be unification or checking for equality depending on the language. Or it co

"Likewise, we know exactly what this line of code does: a = b + 5;" It could easily be unification or checking for equality depending on the language. Or it could be an assertion. "Except for dot notation doesn’t do the same thing in Objective-C as it does in other languages." And ='s doesn't do the same thing in objective-C as in other languages. (Although it does mean the same thing as in other C languages). If you treat structure access as nested method calls, and then understand that certain methods do not have setters, this is a non-problem conceptually. It is just a matter of knowing what methods can have get and set used on them, and which cannot. If you don't know that (and can't figure it out easily), I feel like you are SOL.