PATCH: Augmented assignment

[David]

On Fri, 9 Jun 2000 16:39:38 +0200, Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>
wrote:

>As promised, here is my patch to add augmented assignment (+=, -= and
>family) to Python. It's still Work In Progress, and probably requires a
>rewrite of some magnitude before Guido will accept it.


Why would the Python community want this?  It obfuscates code, in as much
that newbies aren't likely to intuite what the symbols mean.
 
We just had a thread suggesting that = and == are frequently confused by
newbies.   How much more confused would they be with a plethora of
alternative symbols?
 
Python seems to stick to the "one right way" model of programming: most
people's code tends to look the same.  It increases maintainability and
readability.
 
I think we'll end up with a confusion of styles if augmented assignments
are allowed.
 
And it's not like it adds new functionality nor improves code readibility.
It just saves the lazy programmer a whopping one or two keystrokes.
 
Bleargh, I say.  IMO, YMMV, IANALL, etc.