Late-binding of function defaults (was Re: What is a function parameter =[] for?)

[Laura Creighton]

In a message of Wed, 25 Nov 2015 07:13:41 -0800, Ned Batchelder writes:
>That's because it's a programming language, and very very little about
>programming languages is obvious.  The best we can hope for is "familiar,"
>and even then, familiar to who?  High school algebra students will at
>first be baffled by "x = x + 1", an equation which is clearly
>unsatisfiable.

The great sticking point for the children I am teaching is
'*' means multiplication.  You can really see that some people 
have to make extensive mental modifications in order to handle
the concept that mathematical truths are expressed in linguistic
and orthographic conventions, and that one can swap out a particular
convention 'x means multiply' and swap in another one '* means
multiply' while leaving the underlying truth unchanged.

Laura