Immutability and Python

[rusi]

On Oct 31, 1:45 am, Neal Becker <ndbeck... at gmail.com> wrote:
> rusi wrote:
> > On Oct 29, 8:20 pm, andrea crotti <andrea.crott... at gmail.com> wrote:
> > <snipped>
> >> Any comments about this? What do you prefer and why?
>
> > Im not sure how what the 'prefer' is about -- your specific num
> > wrapper or is it about the general question of choosing mutable or
> > immutable types?
>
> > If the latter I would suggest you read
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Stepanov#Criticism_of_OOP
>
> > [And remember that Stepanov is the author of C++ STL, he is arguably
> > as important in the C++ world as Stroustrup]
>
> The usual calls for immutability are not related to OO.  They have to do with
> optimization, and specifically with parallel processing.

>From the time of Backus' Turing award
http://www.thocp.net/biographies/papers/backus_turingaward_lecture.pdf
it is standard fare that
assignment = imperative programming (which he collectively and
polemically called the von Neumann bottleneck)
That what he decried as 'conventional programming languages' today
applies to OO languages; see
http://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/backus-lecture.html

A more modern viewpoint:

--------------
Object-oriented programming is eliminated entirely from the
introductory curriculum, because it is both anti-modular and anti-
parallel by its very nature, and hence unsuitable for a modern CS
curriculum.  A proposed new course on object-oriented design
methodology will be offered at the sophomore level for those students
who wish to study this topic.
----------------

from http://existentialtype.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/teaching-fp-to-freshmen/

Call it polemical if you like; noting that that's Carnegie Mellon.