why cannot assign to function call

[Grant Edwards]

On 2009-01-05, Derek Martin <code at pizzashack.org> wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 03, 2009 at 11:38:46AM -0600, Grant Edwards wrote:
>> > Or are they also "BIZARRE"!?
>> 
>> One presumes that Mr. Martin finds anything different from his
>> first computer language to be BIZARRE.  He should try out
>> Prolog or something genuinely different.
>
> One's presumption would be mistaken.  However thank you for
> illustrating my point so precisely, which was after all the
> condescending and insulting way people "communicate" with
> people whom (they think) know less than they do in this forum,
> and not actually how difficult or easy the assignment model of
> Python is to understand.

I'm sorry, but I really don't see how Python's assignment model
could be considered bizarre by anybody who's familiar with more
than one or two languages.  It's actually somewhat common
outside the world of FORTRAN/assembly/C/Pascal.  The only thing
about Python that ever struck me as odd was the semantic
significance of whitespace (and that's not without precedents
either). The significance of white-space changed very quickly
from odd to brilliant.

Among the languages I've known, Python is probably in the
bottom 10% as far as bizarrness goes.  Lisp/Scheme, Prolog,
SNOBOL, COBOL, APL, Forth, Smalltalk and several now-forgotton
almost-purely-functional languages all seemed to me orders of
magnitude more bizarre than Python.

I must admit that a some of those languages (e.g. Forth and
Smalltalk) probably felt more "bizarre" due to their
developement environment than due to the language itself.

And then there is C++ which is bizarre only in the extent to
which it's a complete dog's-breakfast.

Back to work...

-- 
Grant