terminological obscurity

[Grant Edwards]

In article <b2bta0pue2g52ha9uhunbmeunsh0art1l6 at 4ax.com>, Arthur wrote:

> Further to what bothers me here:
> 
> Can't it be said, in helping to distinguish a Python list from the
> standard collections in, say, Java and C++ - that among its most
> important attributes is the ease with which one can work with a list
> as a collection of objects of *heterogenous* type. "Type" here being
> used in the sense that programmers generally use the word.

I think the fact that Python lists can be heterogogenous is one
of the most brilliantly useful things in the language, but
apparently we're not supposed to use lists like that.  Since
tuples aren't mutable, I'm completely at a loss as to how we're
supposed to deal with mutable heterogenous sequences.  C always
required tons of extra work to do stuff like that -- creating
unions of structures with common header fields to tell you what
type of union it was and so on.

> In exploring Python early on, I found this to be a core
> feature, and a real attraction.

Same here.

> Am I missing something again?

If so, then I guess we both are.

-- 
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