NoneType List

[Thomas Passin]

On 1/1/2023 8:47 AM, Stefan Ram wrote:
> Thomas Passin <list1 at tompassin.net> writes:
>> Guido had been working on the ABC language for some years before he
>> developed Python.  ABC was intended mainly as a teaching and prototyping
>> language.
> 
>    In those days, there used to be a language called "Pascal".
>    Pascal had a dichotomy between "functions" and "procedures".
>    A call to a function was intended to have a value.
>    A call to a procedure was intended to have an effect.

Wirth developed Pascal as a teaching language. IIRC, originally it was 
taught to students before there were any implementations. I did most of 
my programming with Turbo Pascal for many years.  Just to clarify what 
you wrote above, in Pascal a "procedure" does not return anything while 
a "function" does.

I really liked (Turbo) Pascal and I hated C back then.  No wonder I like 
Python so much.  It must be something about how my mind works.

>    For some beginners, the difference between a value and
>    and effect can be hard to grasp. So, Pascal's distinction
>    helps to hammer that home.
> 
>    Experienced programmers know the difference and do no longer
>    require the effort of the language to teach it to them.
> 
>    The time when someone is a beginner and still struggles
>    to understand the difference between values and effects
>    usually is significantly shorter than the later time
>    where he has understood it and is programming productively,
>    so it might be better when the language is adapted to
>    people who already have understood the difference.
> 
>