why cannot assign to function call

[Aaron Brady]

On Jan 8, 1:45 am, Steven D'Aprano
<ste... at REMOVE.THIS.cybersource.com.au> wrote:
> On Wed, 07 Jan 2009 10:17:55 +0000, Mark Wooding wrote:
snip
> > The `they're just objects' model is very simple, but gets tied up in
> > knots explaining things.  The `it's all references' model is only a
> > little more complicated, but explains everything.
>
> But it *over* explains, because it implies things that "everybody knows"
> about references in other languages that aren't true for Python.
>
> Of course it's not literally true that "everybody knows" that you can use
> references to implement a swap(x, y) procedure. But people coming from a
> C or Pascal background tend to assume that everything is like C/Pascal,
> and there are a lot of them. If C was a rare, unfamiliar language, my
> opposition to using the term "reference" would be a lot milder. Maybe in
> another five years?
>
> > No, indeed.  Python is a language for talking about paperweights.  And
> > it's because of the paperweights that the duck-typing works: all the
> > paperweights are the same shape and size, so they're physically
> > interchangeable.
>
> Okay, the abstraction has leaked again... are the paperweights references
> to the objects, or the names we've bound objects to? I'm confused...
>
> How do we deal with anonymous objects in your model?
>
> --
> Steven

Mark, hi, Steven, pleasure as always.

Neither side is perfect or wild; (Do admit it); How do we decide what
is best for newcomers to Python, depending on background?