Minor syntax improvements (proposal)

Hi

sensing from the recent emails that there is some chance for
language-changing proposals to be accepted, or at least to be taken
into serious consideration (which does not happen in every language
community), I gathered the courage to venture some small proposals of
my own.
Not much of a contribution, to be sure, and only pertaining to
superficial aspects of the language.

1) allow the use of the keyword "local" (in addition/substitution to
"let") to define a local variable. The word let, in itself, does not
convey any meaning on locality, and in theory could also apply (for
those who are not familiar with the language) to any type of variable.
So it is a bit misleading, or at least not so much useful. The keyword
local is much better, because it is self-explanatory.

2) Simplify the syntax of assignment operators, for the sake of
consistency and simplicity. In all cases where an assignment is taking
place, I propose that only one operator should be used.
I fail to see the reason why = is used at all, in addition to :=
I am probably missing something, but the point is: whatever the
rationale for using =, i.e. yet another operator, in addition to :=,
is this really justified in terms of economy of the language? I am not
talking only in terms of compiler economy, but also in terms of
programmer's mental economy... In sum, it would be much simpler to
have only one assignment operator, and := is of course the best
choice, because it is not ambiguous, whereas = is commonly used by
many programmers for equality testing.

These two improvements will add to the readability of the language, I believe.

Regards,

Luis
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