Polysemy in programming langs (was: Why does the meaning of words change?)

On Saturday, April 17, 2004, at 09:26 PM, Philippe Caquant wrote:

[snip]

> The same with instructions like: A = B, which in
> reality mean "copy B to A".
Yep - copying the value of location B into location A is, of course, what
goes on in the computer & is probably how one would think of it at a low
level; in high level programming it's rather:
"variable A is assigned the value of variable B."

> Even more disturbing when
> "=" also really means "equals", like in "IF A = B
> THEN..."
If you must use such illogical programming languages...   :)

Yes, I fully agree. Such sloppy logic does nothing to help students who
find both programming and logical thought difficult. Personally, I avoid
any such language if I possibly can.

The more sensible languages (e.g. the Pascal family, the C family & Java)
do use different symbols for assignment and equality. Polysemy is, I think,
  normally avoided in engelangs (with the notable exception of Lin) and
IMHO should have no place in that subset of engelangs known as programming
languages

Ray
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