Python Metalanguage confusticates and bebothers me...

[Jonadab the Unsightly One]

"Stephen Hansen" <stephen at cerebralmaelstrom.com> wrote:

> You see, Python has three kinds of arrays. To make things easier
> to understand, they are each called something distinct, and not
> 'immutable arrays', 'mutable dynamic-lengthed arrays' and
> 'associative arrays'. They're 'tuples', 'lists', and 'dictionaries'.
> 
> Isn't that easier to understand?

No, having lists be a special kind of array is confusing 
for me too, and seems *backwards*.  (Lisp and Perl background 
showing through there, I guess.)  I'd be less confused if
they were called static arrays ("sarrays" for short), mutable 
lists ("lists"), and associative arrays ("hashes"), or something 
like that.  Give me time to get used to this new different 
jargon.  Actually, the deal with "dictionaries" isn't so much 
that it's confusing as that it takes plain too long to say.  
"dicts" would be better except for the unfortunate phonological 
similarities to another term.

- jonadab