2.3 list reverse() bug?

Donn Cave donn at u.washington.edu
Fri Dec 26 12:44:02 EST 2003


In article <26vmuvooh62ko48t7m8n2cumg0se7dd7v5 at 4ax.com>,
 Arthur <ajsiegel at optonline.com> wrote:
...
...
> But the response:
> 
> """
> Almost needless to say, it was the poster's intuition that was at
> fault, but he is (was) far from unique in having this sort of
> misconception. 
> """
> 
> frankly bothers me a bit, though it is understandable somewhat in the
> context of the phrasing of the posters question.
>
> Generally speaking, it is hard to understand how someone's intutition
> can be flawed. It's just an "is".

Hm, made sense to me.  But you have to take "intuition" in the
the operational sense, not the primitive, innate ability to build
on experience but the result, the ability plus the experience.
When introduced to a system that follows different rules, our
intuition will occasionally be at fault when it contributes to
an invalid assumption.  Seems to me it couldn't be otherwise
(though honestly if I had much trouble with it, I don't recall
now - likely I just tend to be more interested in such things
and therefore less likely to find out about them by accident.)

> That the programming language might do slight damage to one's naive
> intution is not either the fault of the programming language.
> Something perhaps simply needs to be learned. Once learned, one's
> intuition is happly overridden - no hard feelings.

Or better informed.  If you mean that in cases like the one that
started this thread, one would just have to learn to ignore one's
intuition, that doesn't sound like a happy state to me!

   Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu




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