Modifying Class Object

Steve Holden steve at holdenweb.com
Tue Feb 9 10:53:52 EST 2010


Stephen Hansen wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 10:35 PM, Alf P. Steinbach <alfps at start.no
> <mailto:alfps at start.no>> wrote:
> 
>     Right.
> 
>     "pass by value" is a lower level notion.
> 
>     And as you show below, in the paragraph marked [1], it can be used
>     to describe call by sharing very succinctly and precisely, just as I
>     did... ;-)
> 
> 
> No. There's nothing at all succinct or precise about either "value" or
> "reference" when speaking of programming languages, and using both
> together just compounds that. They are loaded words. The phrase "call my
> value where value is an object reference" is not clear, not obvious, not
> helpful. It requires far too much explanation of every single word
> there, depending on the background of who you are speaking to, to
> explain how it does not exactly use any of the words in a way which the
> person may be expecting, and making sure they understand that it does
> not imply anything that those words usually imply.
> 
> I'm not even going to bother further-- I shouldn't have to begin with--
> your entire post is full of arguments with no more weight then, "I say
> this means that, and its clearer" with absolutely no regard for the fact
> that all of these words have weight and meaning to the world outside of
> your head.
> 
[several paragraphs-worth of bothering further]

So you didn't believe me when I said

> Of course this won't make the slightest difference. "'When I use a
> word,' said Humpty ..."

regards
 Steve
-- 
Steve Holden           +1 571 484 6266   +1 800 494 3119
PyCon is coming! Atlanta, Feb 2010  http://us.pycon.org/
Holden Web LLC                 http://www.holdenweb.com/
UPCOMING EVENTS:        http://holdenweb.eventbrite.com/




More information about the Python-list mailing list