I didn't mean to say that old languages would change the behavior of well established operators, that seems unlikely to happen and would be quite bad for backwa

I didn't mean to say that old languages would change the behavior of well established operators, that seems unlikely to happen and would be quite bad for backwards compatibility. Newer languages, like Rust and Go (although they went with a different solution [0]) but probably others as well don't want to deal with the ambiguity of post- or pre-increment operators. Python as well as you mentioned. From your other replies I see that you don't agree that there is any ambiguity. That is fine with me, I don't plan on trying to convince you. I lack the in-depth knowledge to be able to do that in a credible way anyway. I just note that the designers of newer languages seem to disagree with your conclusion. [0] https://golang.org/doc/faq#inc_dec https://golang.org/doc/faq#inc_dec