assignment expression peeve

[Paul Rubin]

Carl Banks <imbosol at aerojockey.invalid> writes:
> > Whatever.  You're the only programmer I've ever encountered who claims
> > to have actual trouble understanding assignment expressions.
> 
> I really don't appreciate you putting words in my mouth, and I'm sorry
> you feel the need to resort to dishororable tactics.
> 
> I claim assignment expressions are counterintuitive, and hard to read,
> because they go against the grain of natural language.  They require
> more effort because we can't use the language parts of our brains to
> help.

What does it mean to be hard to read?  Your eyes can't make out the
characters on the screen?  Or your eyes can make out the characters,
but the meaning conveyed isn't immediately clear to you.  If the
latter, that means you claim to have trouble understanding the
expressions.

> They require more effort because we can't use the language parts of
> our brains to help.

Some of us either manage to limit our use them to ways where this
isn't a problem, or else it just isn't an issue to begin with.  

Frankly your thing about no natural language analog sounds like hot
air to me.  Have you got an analysis of every natural language ever
spoken in the world, that finds no construct like that?  And even if
you do, where is the slightest evidence that it makes any difference?
Even if it does take an extra millisecond of mental effort to parse
the assignment expression, a workaround resulting from not using it
(such as defining a new class and making an instance of it and calling
some operation on it), being may take 100 times as much effort.