[Edu-sig] Properties use case

[Arthur]

> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: edu-sig-bounces at python.org 
> >[mailto:edu-sig-bounces at python.org] On Behalf Of Scott David Daniels
> >Sent: Saturday, March 18, 2006 1:03 PM
> >To: edu-sig at python.org
> >Subject: Re: [Edu-sig] Properties use case
> >
> >Arthur wrote:

> >Some of the questions feel a lot like, "why so many planar 
> >surfaces in architecture;" to answer them requires work, not 
> >simply in the saying, but in looking back for the whys.  
> >Often the first answer "it makes my skin crawl" is the real 
> >answer; some rule has become so internalized you don't know 
> >why you feel it.  It doesn't necessarily mean Kirby was 
> >saying you had done an incredibly stupid thing; it might 
> >simply mean that something about that as design felt 
> >dangerous to him in some way.

Can we allow this to be about the communication between teacher and student,
and me be the student recognizing that the teacher has the knowledge he
seeks, but frustrated...

Because it is probably exactly my inability to phrase the question properly
-  I'm just a student - that leads to the problem. But if I was able to ask
the question exactly properly, I probably wouldn't need to ask it - I would
probably already have the answer. So I am recognizing that *I* am the source
of the problem, in this sense.  But that doesn't make the problem go away.
Or allow us the say that the process is working.

Intuitively, there is something qualitatively different - float as
primitive, complex number as primitive.  Simply a wrong intuition?  Nothing
lying beneath it?  

>From where I sit it looks that one might choose to express a 3 element
vector as a tuple or one might choose to express is as a list, or even more
likely a mutable array.  And while suspecting that one can get into
religious arguments about the matter, in practice smart people can be found
doing either or both.  I don't understand, really, the distinction between a
vector expressed as a list and a vector expressed as a tuple, from the
concept of a complex number in mutable form, and one in immutable form. 

If you feel like trying to help...

Art