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    Unless I've misunderstood your first point, I don't think it applies - this question seems entirely unrelated to whether any programming language actually uses iff. (And in fact I'm not familiar with any programming language that uses it, though that shouldn't matter.) Commented Nov 18, 2024 at 17:24
  • OP is under the assumption it is a common phrase developers would be exposed to. I'm pointing out that a lot of young developers may not have been exposed to it because it is not used, and therefore not taught, in high level language development. Commented Nov 18, 2024 at 18:05
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    @Kevin Few if any languages have the words "tree", "pointer", or "database" in their syntax, but I would still expect a programmer to know what they mean if they appear in the comments. iff describes a property of the algorithm, but isn't a step in it, so it's unlikely to appear in a statement or expression (except perhaps in declarative logic languages like Prolog), but that sort of high-level guarantee is exactly what comments are for. Commented Nov 18, 2024 at 19:25
  • You are making the same assumption as the OP. Developers are taught, and expected to know, the constructs of trees and pointers, they may not have been taught IFF and instead only know it as IF ELSE. I even provided an example of how IFF is taught in various maths courses, but was not covered in any programming study. Commented Nov 18, 2024 at 20:02
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    @freakish I'm talking about "The double 'f' syntax is not common in all programming languages" (emphasis added). Commented Nov 19, 2024 at 15:26