a huge amount to think about there. special thanks to james for taking the time to make such detailed responses. the problem is that even though nested loops and the like place a heavy analytical burden on the programmer (i.e. me) as he tries to remember what does what, conceptualizing a program as a collection of classes and functions tied together with a minimal amount of code brings to bear what is, at the moment, an even greater burden.
my gut feeling is that, over time (as james said was true in his own case), and with practice, the relative weights of these two burdens change so that the procedural approach becomes easier to adopt, and its benefits of readability and maintainability easier to enjoy. fingers crossed... i will continue coding the monte carlo machine until it does what i want in more or less clumsy fashion, and might put it up here if it feels like it would be of interest. thanks again, sam -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list