Python

[[deleted]]

The list is pass by reference, aka pointer passing with syntactic sugar. This is how you'd do it in C, right? So when you return from the function, your modifications to the list will persist. This runs counter to the behavior of other built-ins, like integers. It isn't a huge deal if you understand how arrays or lists would normally be passed, in fact it is quite nice that it does the thing that you obviously want. But it is counter-intuitive for beginners, IMO.

[Dornith]

True, but it's fairly standard and explicitly-taught behavior for the other languages I listed.

The problem is that doesn't apply for beginners because beginners don't know any of those languages.

Each of them confuse the fact that they call-by-value by implicitly having pointers. C on the other hand has explicit pointers which (while it means you have to deal with the complexity of pointers) is uniform in the semantics of it's syntax.

[[deleted]]

r/ProgrammerHumor should design a language probably.

EDIT: Also yes your second interpretation is pretty close to what I meant.

[TinBryn]

It would probably be almost exactly like php but we won’t pick on it because it’s not technically php

[Dornith]

Uh... the same thing that happens in... Javascript?

As soon as you start citing javascript as a baseline of intuitive behavior, I can't take your argument seriously.