Warnings can only save people who bother to read them. Yoda conditionals save everyone trying to run or compile the code in question. It goes both ways ;)
Re: awkwardness, it doesn't feel awkward at all to me; given that Erlang and Elixir use assignment for destructuring and pattern-matching, Yoda conditionals feel very natural to me in comparison.
For example, this is valid Elixir code:
foo = {1, 2}
bar = if {baz, 2} = foo do
525600
end
IO.inspect foo # prints {1,2}
IO.inspect bar # prints 525600
IO.inspect baz # prints 1
In some languages it's better to use it, eg. in Java you can go with:
mString != null && mString.equals("test")
or
"test".equals(mString)
They do the same, but the second one adds hidden `defensive programming` to prevent NPE in `equals`. Saves time AND code.
Intended usage of if(a=b) should be written as if((a=b)). Don't know what tool you use at work or at home, but most static code analysers will point you that. Try SonarQube at least.
I feel as if that can rephrased "Don't do it because it is not done." A left-hand side constant is a convention that can have practical benefits in limited cases. Which at least should merit consideration.
"Don't do it because it is not done" is a good reason unless you're working solo and are sure your code will never be seen by others. And even then, it's a good idea to stick to what's done so you don't accumulate bad habits for projects that do have others looking at the code.
You can't if they're both mutable, since the whole idea of a yoda conditional is to put an immutable thing on the left side. What I meant was that you can't use them in that case, so it's a technique you can't use with 100% consistency.
Also it's slightly awkward to read, as mentioned by others already.