golang - Why ++ and -- not work in expressions?

Question

What we take for granted in other languages and almost expect it to work in go, won't work - its almost so natural to do this, so why isn't the compiler happy? Just feeling like bailing out of go sometimes.

The only way to increment the value is to put it in its own separate line?

http://play.golang.org/p/_UnpZVSN9n

package main

import "fmt"
import "strconv"

func main() {
    a := 1
    //Evaluate expression and pass into function - won't work
    fmt.Println(strconv.Itoa(a++))
    //Braces around a++ also won't work
    fmt.Println(strconv.Itoa((a++)))
}

Answer 1

++ and -- are statements in golang, not expressions

Answer 2

Specifically, ++ and -- are statements because it can be very difficult to understand the order of evaluation when they're in an expression.

Consider the following:

// This is not valid Go!
x := 1
x = x++ + x
y := 1
y = ++y + y

What would you expect x to be? What would you expect y to be? By contrast, the order of evaluation is very clear when this is a statement.