Official definition of call-by-value (Re: Finding the instance reference...)

[Grant Edwards]

On 2008-11-13, greg <greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
> Grant Edwards wrote:
>
>> I stopped paying much attention to this thread a while ago, but
>> you've got to admire the persistence of somebody who soldiers
>> on even though Aahz, Fredrik Lund, and Steve Holden are all on
>> the other side of the argument...
>
> Those people clearly know a great deal about Python, and I
> respect them for that. However, that doesn't necessarily make
> them authorities on programming language terminology.
>
> If you're going to indulge in argument by authority, you need
> to pick authorities that can be considered, er, authoritative
> in the field concerned...

Based on past writings of all three, I've come to the
conclusion that (unlike some people I've met over the years)
they can be trusted to know (and not exceed) the limits of
their own knowledge and expertise.  IOW, they know what they
don't know.  So when they make a statement I give it
considerably more weight than I would most people.  There are
certainly areas in which they aren't authorities, but you
don't catch them making statements in those areas as if they
were.

There are other people I know who are probably just as
intelligent and just as expert (in other fields), but when they
get to the edge of what they know, they don't stop talking.
They either don't know (or won't admit) what they don't know.
AFAICT, they apparently just make up stuff in order to have
answers to questions.  Does that make sense?

All that aside, I don't know that I could win an argument with
them even if I was right and they were wrong.  ;)

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! I'm shaving!!
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