[the_af]

> Are there anecdotes of non-absolute-beginners failing to understand that? For first-year students, sure. Do working software engineers have trouble with it?

Sorry, I was unclear: I was talking about beginners. My argument was about intuitivity and "it's easier/harder to learn programming this way". Software engineers are already down the road of "I'm used to this, therefore this is the best way" :P

If I understand you correctly, what you say is entirely possible: that some people think best one way or the other, and that there is no universal paradigm that is more intuitive.

[AnimalMuppet]

So a language is more intuitive if it's similar to what we already know, and we already know math, and therefore "=" for assignment is not intuitive? OK, for first learning a language, I can buy that.

I don't recall ever having trouble with that myself, but that's anecdote, not data...

[the_af]

To be fair, I never had trouble with that either. It was just an example of something I've occasionally read about some people approaching programming languages for the first time.