coding style - where to declare variables

[Frank Millman]

"Marko Rauhamaa"  wrote in message news:87zhyitjz2.fsf at elektro.pacujo.net...
>
> People new to Python are unnecessarily confused by talking about names
> and binding when it's really just ordinary variables and assignment. It
> seems to be mostly some sort of marketing lingo that seeks to create an
> air of mystique around Python.
>

I don't think that is a fair comment.

I am not qualified to enter the debate itself, but as an 'outsider' I can 
offer two thoughts -

1. It seems that, whatever terminology we come up with, some other language 
will use similar terminology, but with a subtly different meaning. Newcomers 
to Python coming from that other language often get confused because they 
make certain assumptions, based on their other experience, which turn out to 
be unfounded in Python.

2. My 'aha' moment came early on when I read somewhere that Python objects 
have 3 attributes - a type, a value, and a unique id. One thing that they do 
*not* have is a name. Once I understood that, a lot of things became 
clearer.

Frank Millman