Slices time complexity

[Ben Finney]

Gregory Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> writes:

> If I draw two boxes on a blackboard with an arrow between them, I
> think it's perfectly reasonable to call that arrow a pointer.

Right. So the box with an arrow coming out of it is a good metaphor for
pointers — *in languages that have pointers*, which Python does not.

A box with an arrow coming out of it is a poor metaphor for Python's
references, since a Python reference doesn't contain anything accessible
to the programmer.

Instead, to avoid giving the false impression that Python's references
are boxes containing things, write a bare name (or other reference) on
the blackboard, referring to the box that *does* contain a value
accessible to the programmer.

-- 
 \       “The Vatican is not a state.… a state must have people. There |
  `\    are no Vaticanians.… No-one gets born in the Vatican except by |
_o__)        an unfortunate accident.” —Geoffrey Robertson, 2010-09-18 |
Ben Finney