On Tuesday, September 5, 2017 at 10:45:45 PM UTC+5:30, Ned Batchelder wrote: > On 9/5/17 1:02 PM, Steve D'Aprano wrote: > > On Tue, 5 Sep 2017 11:37 pm, Gregory Ewing wrote: > > > >> Dennis Lee Bieber wrote: > >>> Pascal, probably Modula-2, Visual BASIC are closer to the C++ reference > >>> semantics, in that the definition of a function declares how the > >>> argument(s) are passed. > >> Well, sort of. In Pascal and Modula, and also VB I think, > >> parameters are the only things that can be declared as having > >> reference semantics, whereas references in C++ are first-class > >> things that can be stored in any variable. > > No, they aren't first-class. > > Did you mis-read Gregory's claim? He said, "references *in C++* are > first-class things". You seem to be talking below about Python things.
I think its mostly true of C++ And Steven did say: (I don't know enough about C++ to distinguish between the last two opinions, but I'm strongly leaning towards "not values at all".) So he seems to be talking of C++ (as analogous to python??) But I dont see that any of it is relevant Whether references are - first-class (Algol-68, pointers-in-C) or are simply - second class (C++) - invisible (python, lisp, ruby, javascript) has little to do with what we are talking The question is whether we need the *idea* of references (modulo humpty-dumpty-fication) to talk *about* the language; ie it needs to be there in the human/informal ontology, even if the docs play word-games and try to avoid trigger-words in honour of PC. In my view its almost the defining quality of imperative languages that the semantics of the language is not properly/fully comprehensive without (something like) references. [Replace "imperative language" with "assignment and mutation" if you like] -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
