[erlang-questions] some language changes

[James Hague]

> > * destructive updates of local variables (that is, removing the
> > single-assignment property)
>
> AAAAA!!!!!!   Absolutely no.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with it.  It's exactly the same as:

A = A
A1 = A + B
A2 = A1 + 5

etc., but less ugly.  And it's easy to do in BEAM while still avoiding
destructive updates of *data structures*.  People have requested this
in Erlang before, and the main problem that it conflicts with the
semantics of pattern matching.  But BEAM supports it just fine.

James