Richard Blackwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Bengt Richter wrote: > > >Tell him in Python foo is a member of one set and 5 is a member of another, > >and foo = 5 expresses the step of putting them into correspondence > >to define a mapping, not declaring them equal. > > > Could I honestly argue this to him? From what basis do I argue that it > is not an equation? In any event, he would likely (passionately) > disagree considering his notion that programming is an off-shoot of > math and thus at the fundamental level has identical concepts and > rules. Believe it or not, he used to be a programmer. Back in the day > (while I was getting my PhD in philosophy), he was a employed > programmer using Cobol, Fortran, and other languages like that. Did > his seemingly peculiar definition of variable exist at that time?
Because, this is shorthand that operates at quite a bit of a higher level than the mathematical roots of a programming language. Here is a peek of what is going in when foo = 5 is evaluated. create an anonymous int object set the value of that object to 5 create a symbol foo bind the location the anonymous object to symbol foo > > >Even in math notation, ISTM important to distinguish between > >a finger and what it may for the moment be pointing at. > > > >Regards, > >Bengt Richter > > > -- Kirk Job-Sluder "The square-jawed homunculi of Tommy Hilfinger ads make every day an existential holocaust." --Scary Go Round -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
