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Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 16:19:17 +1000
From: Ross Higson <rosshigsonREMOVE_ME@optusnet.com.au>
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Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: += in ada
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Date: 2003-10-20T16:19:17+10:00
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> 
> Take a look some time at comp.lang.c, comp.lang.c++, comp.lang.java.*,
> comp.lang.perl, and comp.lang.python. You might just find that each of
> them gets more posts in a day than comp.lang.ada gets in a month. Is
> that *because* they each have "+="? I don't know, but you cannot deny
> the correlation between "+=" and popularity. (Of course, they all use
> "=" rather than ":=" for assignment, which may also be a huge factor,
> but that's another story.)

So presumably adding a C/C++ type assignment operator to Ada is going to 
be your next great crusade ?. Wonderful - then all Ada programmers could 
enjoy one of my favorite C/C++ bugs:

#include <stdio.h>
main () {
int a = 0;
if (a = 0)
    printf ("Russ has a point\n");
else
    printf ("Russ is an idiot\n");
}

I've actually seen texts that say in C++ you should always write things 
like "if (5 == b)" instead of "if (b == 5)" just in case you were to 
accidentally write "if (b = 5)". Now *there's* a language that protects 
the user from easy-to-make but hard-to-spot mistakes, and encourages 
readability into the bargain !.

> 
> I've already wasted more than enough time on this little endeavor, so
> I may just take your suggestion.

(grateful sigh from the entire newgroup readership !)