Warnings can only save people who bother to read them. Yoda conditionals save everyone trying to run or compile the code in question. It goes both ways ;)

Re: awkwardness, it doesn't feel awkward at all to me; given that Erlang and Elixir use assignment for destructuring and pattern-matching, Yoda conditionals feel very natural to me in comparison.

For example, this is valid Elixir code:

    foo = {1, 2}
    
    bar = if {baz, 2} = foo do
            525600
          end
    
    IO.inspect foo  # prints {1,2}
    IO.inspect bar  # prints 525600
    IO.inspect baz  # prints 1