xxxxxx@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de (Michael Sperber [Mr. Preprocessor]) writes:

> Definitely.  I just taught this stuff to 250 beginning students last
> week, and many had been confused by the obscurity in programming
> languages they had learned before.

An equally plausible explanation is that they were not taught
(properly) the concepts of references (lvalues) and the concept of
pass-by-value.  Given the wide variability in students, and the
quality of instructors and textbooks (especially in beginning
programming classes), it is difficult to make conclusions about
programming design based on student difficulties.

That doesn't mean anecdotal evidence isn't instructive, of course.

> What I fail to see is a good reason *not* to rename the new
> construct.  Even Common Lisp has both SETQ and SETF.

But in Common List, SETQ is a special case SETF.
I find it inelegant to use two forms where one is a generalization
of other other, and the latter is just as convenient.
--
	--Per Bothner
xxxxxx@bothner.com   http://www.bothner.com/~per/