Maybe if it were a single student, but this is a problem that has persisted across generations of students. I'm a fan of blaming tools for being poorly designed

Maybe if it were a single student, but this is a problem that has persisted across generations of students. I'm a fan of blaming tools for being poorly designed rather than the sad student who has to suffer using them. All their lives these students are told that "=" means that the left hand side and right hand side are equivalent. Then we give them a tool that throws the well-understood semantic meaning of the symbol out the window (for no good reason, mind you), and then you say we are to blame the student for being confused?