And I dispute the "pretty much everybody used" part. In fact, I think the article contradicts that opinion. Algol used it, and so did Pascal. But Pascal was only a year old [Edit: at the time the choice was made for C] - it [Pascal] hadn't set the world on fire yet (to the degree that ever did). That leaves Algol using ":=", and FORTRAN, COBOL, and Lisp not using it. That's not "pretty much everybody used".

Yeah, it's probably more accurate to say that "everybody from the Algol line used := for assignment", with C being the first language of that line to stop.

> From the article:

Articles, like desserts, aren't always right. I am sorely tempted to pull out Sammet's book tonight and start counting.

Too late to edit, but I've gone and done it: scanned through Sammet's Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals for languages with identifiable assignment statements. I skip assembly-style, English-like (COBOL etc.), and functional-style (LISP etc.) syntax, and for summary purposes ignore accompanying keywords like BASIC's LET.

Results:

ν = ε     18 (AMTRAN, BASIC, COLASL, CPS, FORTRAN, FORTRANSIT, JOSS, JOVIAL, Klerer-May, Laning & Zierler, MAD, MADCAP, MAP, MATH-MATIC, MIRFAC, PL/I, QUICKTRAN, UNICODE)

ν ← ε     4 (APL, DIALOG, IT, LISP2)

ε → ν     2 (MADCAP, NELIAC)

ν := ε     1 (ALGOL)

ε * ν     1 (BACIAC)

So pretty much everybody used ‘=’. ALGOL was an outlier, though admittedly more influential than BACIAC.