&gt; you have to learn what &quot;+&quot; does, so why not remove that and just have &quot;-&quot; since you can subtract negative numbers to add.<p>Because &quot;-&quot; is part of the domain language (mathematics).<p>&gt; The concept of incrementing or decrementing a value is trivial.<p>For a normal function (i.e. something that could be implemented as library functionality) then I agree with you. But for a language-level operator, it&#x27;s a special case. It probably has its own precedence. It definitely complicates the metamodel.<p>&gt; If you&#x27;re going to campaign against &quot;++&quot;, might as well go all the way back to BASIC days and only allow &quot;x = x + 1&quot;<p>I would. How many times do you need to add 1 to something anyway?