On Fri, 7 Jul 2017 03:05 am, Marko Rauhamaa wrote: > I believe the concept of an object is among the more difficult things > for novice programmers to get.
True, but that has nothing to do with object identity. Inheritance, "is-a" versus "has-a" relationships, when to write len(x) versus x.len(), those are more troublesome than identity. In fact, I would expect that object identity ("sameness") is probably the least difficult thing for novices to understand. People have an intuitive[1] understanding of identity based on the properties and behaviour of physical objects. [1] It may actually be instinctive -- there are studies that show that even young babies express surprise when they see something that violates the intuitive properties of identity. For example, if you pass a toy in front of the baby, then behind a screen, and swap it for a different toy before showing it again, babies tend to express surprise. -- Steve “Cheer up,” they said, “things could be worse.” So I cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list