This page is part of the web mail archives of SRFI 17 from before July 7th, 2015. The new archives for SRFI 17 contain all messages, not just those from before July 7th, 2015.
Mike's students aren't unusual. I see this problem every year here, too. Changing the value that a variable stands for and changing a value _per se_ are just so different. People (and not just students) need a lot of help keeping them apart. Appealing to other languages makes no sense to me. When I translate Scheme closure code to object code in pseuod-C++ I get the same blank stares when I ask "what does this do?". Furthermore, considering how badly many (but not all) those students (and professionals!) program who have done C++ before (or are doing it), I start wondering whether the argument shouldn't go the other way. Let's avoid the pitfalls of other languages. -- Matthias Diskussion, Krawall, und das wärs ... überhaupt! :-)