I started off my programming career developing C applications. This was primarily because I did my work on Mini computers running UNIX. Almost unheard of at the time :-). For the first 14 years from 1982 to 1996 I developed my applications in C. During that same time frame SQL came along for relational databases. Now I had SQL, C and Embedded SQL for C. Throw in curses for developing screen applications and what more could a developer want? :-).
In late 1996 I began developing applications in Visual Basic 4, and found events. Very cool. But I still missed some of the features I had grown to love in C.
Recently I noticed the section on compound operators in SQL Server 2008. This is interesting since these are the first new operators added to SQL Server in at least the last 8 years. SQL server 2005 and SQL server 2000 both had the same list of operators. Now Microsoft has added some new ones. In addition adding the BackSlash operator is just a nice little bonus (now if I could just get my ternary operator (?:)).
I guess a good thing about starting my career developing C has been that all the new languages (including SQL server) are going back and picking up some of the concepts from C. K&R should be proud :-).
New expression operations in SQL Server 2008 Tranasact-SQL
+= (Add EQUALS) (Transact-SQL) -= (Subtract EQUALS) (Transact-SQL) *= (Multiply EQUALS) (Transact-SQL) /= (Divide EQUALS) (Transact-SQL) \ (Backslash) (Transact-SQL) %= (Modulo EQUALS) (Transact-SQL) &= (Bitwise AND EQUALS) (Transact-SQL) |= (Bitwise OR EQUALS) (Transact-SQL) ^= (Bitwise Exclusive OR EQUALS) (Transact-SQL) ~ (Bitwise NOT) (Transact-SQL) 
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