IIRC it was changed in the curriculum at some point, since we had both BODMAS and later BIDMAS. I imagine it was done for the reason you gave, it does make more sense

When I was in school, we only used apostrophe, comma, open and close paren, exclamation point, question mark, dollar sign, and period. Maybe a percent sign in later years. Of course my exposure to computers in those days was watching TV when the announcer took a stack of (punch) cards from a card sorter and called it a computer (UNIVAC IIRC).