Observations on the assignment operator thread:

Choosing an orthographic representation for a language based on  
terseness or easiness to type it in leads to ... Perl (widely held as  
a 'write-only' ie unreadable language). The characters will be read  
(by a human) many more times than typed. Choose readable clarity over  
typing convenience.

Anytime you leave basic ASCII you limit your portability. Wasting  
time converting characters is ... wasting time. There _are_ good  
reasons for internal representations to be more complex. We don't  
have them here. Design as simply as possible.

We should think about adoption (not among us--among them). ':=' is  
widely recognized as an assignment. Lower the entry threshold for  
adoption by the world where possible.

The same argument holds for using the up-arrow '^' replacement for  
return. '^ foo' should be 'return foo' IMO because it reads  
unambiguously. Typing convenience can be accomplished using keyboard  
macro widgets (QuicKeys comes to mind).

-Eric