[catnaroek]

> Re: Reflection and metaprogramming. I guess you're suggesting teaching her some variant of Lisp?

I wasn't talking about Lisp specifically. Many libraries and frameworks written in “mundane” languages like Python and Ruby make use of metaprogramming facilities to great effect. Now, you can't say with a straight face that monoids are scary but metaprogramming is not.

> I had to Google object identity.

In most object-oriented programming languages, every object has a unique identity, which is assigned when the object is constructed, and from then onwards can't be mutated. The uniqueness of these object identities can get in the way when you want to program with compound values, for example, the Java expression `new Point2D(2,3) == new Point2D(2,3)` evaluates to `false`, simply because the objects have different identities.

> Is this [http://www.cs.sfu.ca/CourseCentral/354/zaiane/material/notes...] what you mean?

Yes.