I had grand ambitions this week. I’d come across a smattering of articles delving into the history of programming languages, practices, and other Internet-based tidbits. I’d pondered a pithy title like “if !mistake(history) do repeat” and dug through my source materials for evidence, but came up a bit empty-handed. In the end, the line that really summed up this week’s theme was found at the closing of an interesting article asking why does “=” mean assignment?
“I don’t know if this adds anything to the conversation. I just like software history.”
So with that in mind, that’s where we’ll start, with an interesting look at the origins of “=” as a tool of variable value assignment rather than (or in addition to, rather) evaluation.
Read more at The New Stack
