Closures in leu of pointers?

[rusi]

On Saturday, June 29, 2013 10:32:01 PM UTC+5:30, Antoon Pardon wrote:
> Op 29-06-13 16:02, Michael Torrie schreef:
> > The real problem here is that you don't understand how python variables
> > work.  And in fact, python does not have variables.  It has names that
> > bind to objects.
> 
> I don't understand why members of this list keep saying this. Sure the
> variables in python behave differently than those in C and algol  But 
> they behave similarly as those in smalltalk and lisp and I haven't seen
> anyone claim that smalltalk and lisp don't have variables.
> 
> We might as well say that C doesn't have variables, it has names
> pointing to memory locations or value containers or something
> like that.
> 
> AFAICS there is no reason why "variable" wouldn't be appropiate
> for python names as opposed to C names.

Well mathematicians (or to be more precise functional programmers pretending to be mathematicians) claim that any imperative language does not have variables.

And recently on this list I saw the exact opposite claim -- functional languages dont have variables.

I also remember my statistics teacher dinning it into us -- a random variable is not a variable.

So each one varies according to his own notions I guess :-)