&gt; If you leave them in they&#x27;re one more special case that everyone has to memorize before they can maintain someone else&#x27;s code<p>It&#x27;s literally no different than having to remember what &quot;+=&quot; does... which is what&#x27;s being proposed as the alternative.<p>&gt; Reading is more important than writing<p>I would agree, but &quot;x++&quot; is not difficult to read. It&#x27;s more concise than having to read &quot;x += 1&quot;. Or worse, beginners will think it&#x27;s clever to define constants for this so now you&#x27;ll get &quot;x += INCREMENT_VALUE&quot;, making you have to go lookup whatever &quot;INCREMENT_VALUE&quot; is, etc...