Alexander Koryagin:   
      
   AK> C has already died.   
      
   The rumours of its death are greatly exagerrated.  It is one   
   of the most used languages with nary an alternative for   
   embedded systems.  Some major PC projects are developed in   
   C: GIMP, DarkTable, Git, NetPBM (for which I have written   
   several tools).   
      
   AK> It is too obsolete to be in use.   
      
   Why?  Although Modula and Pascal are much better languages,   
   they are not nearly as popular...   
      
   AK> C++ has replaced it.   
      
   C++ cannot replace C because it is a totally different   
   language with an opposite ideology.  C is a small, simple   
   and minimalistic procedural language, whereas C++ is a huge,   
   heavy and bloated object-oriented and multi-paradigm   
   monster.   
      
   AK> The matter IMHO is that the assignment operator "=" is   
   AK> the most frequent operator in C++.   
      
   Seems true.   
      
   AK> So it is was a sound idea to make it so short.   
      
   I think that disciplied programmers have long ago agreed   
   that readability is preferable to the utter paranoid   
   brevity, so that the atoi() function would be better named   
   as strtoint(), for example.  Code is read much more   
   frequently than it is modified, and modification itself   
   requires extensive reading.   
      
   AK> Besides, ":=b" looks like a fidonet smiley with the   
   AK> tongue out of the mouth. :=b   
      
   Do not cramp the operator and operands together, use   
   whitespace, e.g.: a := b;   
      
   ---   
    * Origin: *** nntp://fidonews.mine.nu *** Finland *** (2:221/6.0)