anything like C++ references?

[Erik Max Francis]

Stephen Horne wrote:

> The fact that Python has, in this respect, followed the C etc
> tradition doesn't mean it is doing the right thing.

But in a sense this is tilting at windmills.  One could make some
high-brow arguments about how these are the wrong choices of symbols for
these kinds of operations, but the simple fact is that the computer
science community as a whole -- far and wide -- has really grown
accustomed to it.  Nothing's preventing you from choosing some other
choice in your own language (if even those symbols would have relevance!
e.g. def/eq vs. =/==), but arguing that Python shouldn't do it because
that doesn't match mathematics is an academic (in both senses of the
word).  It does, there's wide community acceptance of this -- for better
or worse -- from a large and exceptionally popular family of languages
-- so that isn't going to change.

-- 
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