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My cousin keeps calling variables 'buckets' and I finally snapped at Thanksgiving
He's been at it since he started a Python course in September, and I get why it bugs me: thinking of a variable as a container you fill up makes people picture copying stuff around instead of pointing at it. Am I the only one who thinks the wrong mental picture early on causes way more confusion later than the actual syntax?
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the_susan16d ago
Used to roll my eyes at the bucket thing too, until I watched my nephew learn Java. He kept "putting" strings in his bucket and then got wrecked when two variables pointed at the same list and changing one changed both. Once I explained it as a label stuck on a box instead of a box you pour stuff into, it clicked for him in like ten minutes. So yeah, the picture matters way more than people admit. Names point at things, they are not the things.
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