He said, "this is why I tend to use a slightly smaller subset of some of the features that C-family languages support, along with an abundance of brackets."

C does not support his first example. The standard states that the behavior is undefined.

> If I remember rightly [..]

You're probably not wrong, but I specifically remember there was something you could do in order to trick the compiler to allow modification on the left hand side to happen. It could possibly be by having two variable names referencing the same variable - for example.

Besides, the whole point was that it's usually not clever "trying to be clever". It just creates confusion. I don't personally believe the majority of people need to test the entire C spec to it's absolute boundary. A subset serves most people perfectly well.