On 5/6/14 6:46 PM, Chris Angelico wrote:
Is there really a fundamental
difference between languages in which that is equally valid syntax and
does exactly the same thing?
No. And from that standpoint, python has variables. I know, because I
thought about python's 'variables' as variables for quite sometime
before I learned about the 'beautiful heart of python'. AND I used them
as variables too, ignorantly of course.
And we must never forget that CPython's underpinnings, uhm C, uses
variables, C ones... (never mind)
Here is the rub. What happens when a newbie (me, some some years ago)
gets a strange 'surprise' when trying to use python's variables:
Given that A is bound to 3.5, and B is also bound to another object 3.5:
A == B
True
A is B
False
... and now they want to know why if A == 3.5 and B == 3.5 does (A is B)
come up False?
This is just one of a dozen 'different' kinds of examples. And the
answer is the same, Python does not have variables, Python has names
bound to objects.
The cleanest clearest explanation of Python's (name-->object) model is
'the beautiful heart of python' in Mark Summerfield's Programming Python
3.
I think we should STOP saying that python does not have variables (like
that horse hasn't been beaten before, to death) but instead explain
Python's beautiful heart. uhm, "What you have been using in ignorance
as a simple variable is, uhm, a 'name' bound to an object... and these
are its strange properties:
... enumerated...
marcus
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