> When you ask them, it's invariably that in their mind, there's mystic connection between comparison operators and if statements.

It doesn't have to be mystic. It's perfectly fine to design a language that works like this. It wouldn't be a good language, but it would be possible.

Just like PHP didn't use to support constructs like `f(10)[2]`, that used to be a syntax error. So you needed something like `x = f(10);` first, before accessing `x[2]`.

If you saw that kind of construction with the intermediate variable, you might also accuse the programmer of imagining mystic connections.