I've been using C since about 1993 (I think, maybe '94), and then C++ and Java in more recent years.  I too prefer its syntax stylings, in almost every way, to more wordy languages like BASIC.  (Because the idea of using punctuation marks to do flow control makes sense.  It breaks it up for the eyeball a lot better than words like BEGIN and END and so on.)  So I too would prefer a not-equal operator to look like "!=" over "<>".  It's what I'm used to.  But I had to think about the 'style' of kosscript and try to keep it as consistent as I could.  It just *felt* like "<>" is more close to how wordy languages work than != is.