Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com>: > be careful of simplifications that will cause problems down the line.
Sure. Let it be said, though, that sometimes you learn through inaccuracies, a technique used intentionally by Knuth's TeXBook, for example. In fact, you get through highschool mathematics successfully without knowing what numbers and variables actually are. > Distinguishing "small values" from "big values" leads to the obvious > question: Which is which? And why doesn't this work? This is related to the recent id(string) question on this forum. Unfortunately neither the "everything is a reference" model nor the "small/big" model help you predict the value of an "is" operator in the ambiguous cases. Back to the original question, though. Python, I think, is a great introductory programming language to a complete newbie. Explaining Python's memory model at some level is necessary right off the bat. However, it is far from easy to understand. I'm not sure the small/big way is the best approach, but it seeks to bridge the gap from the naive understanding of tutorial day one to the presented question (tutorial day two). Marko -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
