Forgive my indulgence, I find this rather academic discussion kind of interesting, as it turns out.
On Sun, Jan 04, 2009 at 10:55:09PM -0600, Derek Martin wrote: > > You can't argue that one semantic or another is more intuitive > > without offering evidence. > > I think I have though, not that it matters, since that was never > really my point. Python's assignment model requires more explanation > than the traditional one, simply to state what it does. That alone is > evidence (but not proof). Here's (I think) a better argument, FWIW: The traditional model ties a name to some (usually predefined and static) storage (a memory address, or at least the start of a string of them). This is a very concrete thing to represent, and the conceptualization of variables as named bins in such languages captures this very succinctly, and requires no understanding of the underlying implementation for the programmer to use (at least with primitive data types, which are all that are used generally when variables are first introduced). The Python model binds a name to a particular Python object, which is itself an abstraction; understanding requires understanding first what an "object" is, and I think at least in some measure some knowledge about how Python is implemented (primitive data types are actually objects; and also recall the recent discussion about what constitutes a "value" in Python). The abstraction, and the requirement to partially understand the underlying implemenation, make the Python model inherently more complicated, and therefore also inherently less intuitive. That also is not proof, but as I said, real proof is rather hard to come by... And FWIW, remember that I never suggested that all this was without good reason, and I'm not attempting to advocate for simplifying the model. :) -- Derek D. Martin http://www.pizzashack.org/ GPG Key ID: 0x81CFE75D
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