On Tue, Sep 26, 2017 at 4:25 PM, Gregory Ewing <greg.ew...@canterbury.ac.nz> wrote: > Neil Cerutti wrote: >> >> The quest to find a succinct way to categorize Python's argument >> passing for non-Python programmers strikes me as a sincere effort >> to to simplify something that just isn't simple. > > > I don't see how it's useful to do that in the first place. > Under what circumstances would you find yourself having to > explain *just* Python parameter passing and nothing else > about the language?
And this entire debate is ONLY about trying to explain to people who already know some other language AND think that call-by-value and call-by-reference are the only two options. I've explained Python's (or JavaScript's, since they're the same) object model to a number of novice programmers without any difficulties, without talking about pointers or invisible values or any of that junk. There are just two things to explain: the concept of names referring to objects, and variable scope. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
