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Yeesh, that’s a sad thing to burn out over. Python made this decision to avoid assignment expressions a long time ago and has done fine without this capability. Why not just leave well enough alone? Adding a new variation to assignment syntax (just because of the opinion that = vs == is too confusing (even though C and Ruby and many other languages deal with it fine)) is just going to add more confusion to the language. For a line saved here and there?

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I had the same gut reaction when I heard the PEP even exists. But now I actually read the PEP, it's very well written and makes a reasonably good case that in specific scenarios it will be an improvement.

(My second gut reaction was it should have used `as NAME` postfix syntax. The PEP debunks that too. Turns out it previously proposed that and the switch to := was a major improvement :-)

The bigger question is whether the gains justify making the language larger... That's subjective, impossible to settle by debate, and the kind of thing a BDFL can help decide one way or the other :-)

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