Call by binding [was Re: [Tutor] beginning to code]

[Chris Angelico]

On Tue, Sep 26, 2017 at 4:25 PM, Gregory Ewing
<greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
> Neil Cerutti wrote:
>>
>> The quest to find a succinct way to categorize Python's argument
>> passing for non-Python programmers strikes me as a sincere effort
>> to to simplify something that just isn't simple.
>
>
> I don't see how it's useful to do that in the first place.
> Under what circumstances would you find yourself having to
> explain *just* Python parameter passing and nothing else
> about the language?

And this entire debate is ONLY about trying to explain to people who
already know some other language AND think that call-by-value and
call-by-reference are the only two options. I've explained Python's
(or JavaScript's, since they're the same) object model to a number of
novice programmers without any difficulties, without talking about
pointers or invisible values or any of that junk. There are just two
things to explain: the concept of names referring to objects, and
variable scope.

ChrisA