[publius911]

Now how can something equal itself plus unity?

Easily.
Programming is not language grammar; it is a series of shortcut statements. I learned programming in the late 70s and really miss basic. I really wish some modern version of it still was available.

In your example, the statement says, "there is a new count, and it is the existing count plus 1" In early computers economy of characters was critical. And the statement was easily understood.

[central_va]

I know what you are saying, but I was in a programming class and a guy was arguing with the instructor, “a can’t equal a + 1”. After a while he shut up then he dropped the class. Some people should not program.