Why do most programming languages only have binary equality comparison operators?

Question

In natural languages, we would say \"some color is a primary color if the color is red, blue, or yellow.\"

In every programming language I\'ve seen, that translates

Answer 1

The latter examples you give are effectively syntactic sugar, they'd have to evaluate to the same code as the longer form as at some point the executed code has to compare your value with each of the conditions in turn.

The array comparison syntax, given in several forms here, closer and I suspect there are other languages which get even closer.

The main problem with making syntax closer to natural language is that the latter is not just ambiguous, it's hideously ambiguous. Even keeping ambiguity to a minimum we still manage to introduce bugs into our apps, can you imagine what it would be like if you programmed in natural english?!