In a message of Tue, 03 Mar 2009 15:27:28 MST, David MacQuigg writes:

At 10:00 AM 3/2/2009 -0800, michel paul wrote:

...

Before I discovered Python a couple of years ago I was experimenting wit h a pseudo-code approach for expressing math concepts. I had this kind o f stuff in mind:

factorial(n): if n < 2 ---> 1 else ---> n*factorial(n-1)

I like the feeling of action in --->, but I also like the self-explanator y "return". Any other suggestions? Strong preferences?

We could use a symbol other than = for assignment, just to avoid confusio n with the comparison operator and to introduce the idea of variables as labels, not containers. How about:

a2 --> a**2 a --> b --> c --> 0

Datapoint: the children I was teaching how to write games have all had terrible problems with arrows. Whenever I tried to use them to indicate anything there was this large mental thud. So my suspicion is that this will make things harder, rather than easier. In explaining things I found that words worked best. and the words that worked were: 'is bound to' Just my 2 kronor, Laura