Yes, that is the primary reason they were flipped. Typing

  x=-42;

when you meant

  x= -42;

was just too easy. I know. I did it.

Similarly, as I recall, variable initialization of the form

  int i 17;

created some sort of parsing problem and was changed to the current form

  int i = 17;

I learned Unix on a PDP-11 running v6 and I had to learn all of the changes when we got 32V for the new VAX.