Kirby writes -

But then, programming with variables, the type of which may not be readily known to the reader, is not the same thing as raw entry of numbers into a calculator. Just looking at raw numbers is to all together miss the point of adding a // key to this calculator (and saving / from doing double-duty depending on the type of inputs we feed it).

I guess I do communicate poorly. My point was totally something else: What a end-user understands themselves to be working with determines their experience wth it. If they aren't clear that they are in an environment where something other than calculator numerics is at work, the fact that they are getting results inconsistent with normal calculator numerics seems broken. If their expectations are put properly in line with what they are going to experience, the experience is changed. By ultimate point is that I think that there has been an implicit assumption that lessons learned from environments like VPython in a college physics class are somehow relevent or meaningful when speaking of, let's say, a beginning programming class. I contend that they are not different shades of gray. They are just different, period. Design decisions that might well be good for one constituency, could be directly counter-productive as to the other. It would be better if things were simpler. Its not my fault that they may not be. I happen to have a deeper interest in one constituenecy than the other. So I have been struggling to get this simple distinction on some map. Very badly. ART