tough-to-explain Python

[nn]

On Jul 7, 5:18 pm, kj <no.em... at please.post> wrote:
> In <mailman.2796.1246997332.8015.python-l... at python.org> Chris Rebert <c... at rebertia.com> writes:
>
> >You might find the following helpful (partially):
> >http://effbot.org/zone/call-by-object.htm
>
> Extremely helpful.  Thanks!  (I learned more from it than someone
> who will teach the stuff would care to admit...)
>
> And it confirmed Paul Graham's often-made assertion that all of
> programming language design is still catching up to Lisp...
>
> kj

One possibility is to avoid teaching mutable datatypes at the
beginning (i.e. no lists,dicts and sets), then you would have
something more lispish. You would have to use tuples instead of lists
for everything. That avoids the gotchas of mutable types at the cost
of efficiency.

Python is not a purist language but rather walks a fine line between
high flexible abstractions and simple fast implementation.