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From: Jan Ziak <0xe2.0x9a.0x9b@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Subject: Re: Why are ambiguous grammars usually a bad idea? Why are languages usually defined and implemented with ambiguous grammars?
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2021 13:47:36 -0800 (PST)
Organization: Compilers Central
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On Thursday, December 30, 2021 at 7:56:15 PM UTC+1, Kaz Kylheku wrote:
> When I started programming from nothing, I saw BASIC examples in a
> book which was doing things like:
>
> 10 X = 2
> 20 X = X + 1
>
> The only language with formulas that I was coming from was math.
>
> So, I thought, what? How can X be equal to X + 1; you cannot solve
> this absurdity!
>
> From then I knew that the people who program computers to understand
> symbols are free thinkers who make them mean anything they want.

"X = X + Y" means "X[t+1] = X[t] + Y[t]" where t is time. Time had to be
omitted from the notation of the BASIC programming language because otherwise
the source code would consume a much larger amount of computer memory and it
would complicate GOTO and FOR/NEXT statements.

-atom
[Interesting take.  In reality, of couse, BASIC borrowed that from Fortran.  Algol
used := for assignment, different from = for equality comparison. -John]