On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 9:43 AM, John Salerno <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > "Dave Parker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message > news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > On May 20, 7:05 pm, Collin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- > For example, consider the two statements: > > x = 8 > x = 10 > > The reaction from most math teachers (and kids) was "one of those is > wrong because x can't equal 2 different things at the same time". > --- > > Aw, come on. I'm a novice programmer but even after reading the most basic > of introductions to a programming language I can tell that x is being > assigned one value, then another. > > It doesn't seem fair to take statements like the above out of the context of > a program and then ask teachers and students about it. This statement: > > 2 + 2 = 4 > > means something in the context of an elementary math class, but is clearly > not an assignment statement in Python. But I've never encountered anyone who > was confused by this distinction, as long as you know where this line > belongs.
Yeah, that's sort of like I mentioned earlier in the thread about there being a time dependence between the two. Not only that, but I just realized that Dave has trotted out several times the notion of representing (and solving) a quadratic equation in FT. Well, let's see... (x-9)**2 - 1 = (too lazy to do the expansion to write in ax**2 + bx + c format) = 0... solve solve solve... wait, x = 8 and x = 10! But how can that be, Dave? You and your elementary kids just told me I can't have two values for x... ;) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
