“I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”

Background ("PEP 572 and decision-making in Python"):

https://lwn.net/Articles/757713/

> The problem with the C-style of assignments is that it leads to this classic error: if(x = 0) {...}

yeah, if you code on 20 years old compilers with no warnings. GCC 4.1 warns about this (with -Wall) and Clang 3.4 warns about this too, without any warning flag.

Not having a problem in the first place is preferable to fighting it with tools. == vs = is a classic mistake that I'm sure every C programmer has wasted some time on. (I'm just undecided if I prefer dealing with this very problem occasionally, or choosing either of the verbosity of := assignments or the non-orthogonality of = assignment statements plus := assignment expressions.)

A programming language and the tools you use with it are tightly integrated: you're never using a language, you're always using a language via a tool. And if all C compilers you might use have warnings enabled for this buggy expression, then there's no problem.

The most important "program" that reads your source code is probably in your brain. You probably have some "tooling" in their that is on the watch for "if (x = y)" and other patterns, but I'm sure you'd prefer to not have to run it.

As another counterexample let me give you "language tooling". For example, write a tool that generates a FFI from $LANGUAGE to C. Is it really so unimportant that $LANGUAGE is clean and simple and easy to parse?