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most likely this very unfortunate misnomer started with fortran, where it was deemed lucrative to point out "how much programs look like mathematic formulas!".
by 5- 1y ago
most likely this very unfortunate misnomer started with fortran, where it was deemed lucrative to point out "how much programs look like mathematic formulas!".
not only is this overloading a symbol (equality) with a completely different meaning (assignment), it is also a poor choice typographically, as it represents a directional operation with a directionless symbol.
using an arrow for assignment is much better.
it's also worth pointing out that unlike most others, logic programming languages (e.g. prolog) have actual variables, not references to mutable or immutable memory cells.
- uwagar 1y agoarrow for assignment is cool, but the backspace key is the only closest arrow-like key on the keyboard but it has a different purpose. plus the arrow key should be laid out such that u dont have to press a SHIFT/CTRL/ALT to produce it. for this reason, i felt C a breath of fresh air cos u could just assign using = instead of what we was doing in pascal which was the horrible := where u had to press SHIFT for the : things like this matter.
- dr_kiszonka 1y agoRight. If we went more in the direction of APL, we would have had way more symbols. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/APL-keybd.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/APL-keyb...