Programming languages should have a keyword to use the last variable you used. Kind of like how he/she/it refers to the last person/thing mentioned.
So you could have for example
if(some_variable_x < 0) IT=0;
To set "some_variable_x" to 0.
Could even have it chain with IT1, IT2, IT3, etc to reference older accessed variables. Maybe get really fancy and IT() would be last function used