Re: HELP: renames and enum values

[John English <je@brighton.ac.uk>]

Robert Dewar wrote:
> In article <38F5D6F9.5B8892F2@bton.ac.uk>,
>   John English <je@bton.ac.uk> wrote:
> >  function Enum_Literal return Enum_Type renames
> Other_Enum_Literal;
> >
> > Now, that *really* confuses them, and none of them would ever
> be
> > able to guess it without being told!
> 
> I have a different view of learning languages, I do not expect
> my students to "guess" anything about a language, I expect them
> to learn rules and apply them.
> 
> I agree that this rule might be non-intuitive if the basic
> semantics of enumeration literals has not been presented in
> a clear manner.

Well, this is not quite what I meant; *if* they had to guess it,
they wouldn't in a million years. I don't expect my students to
guess things either, and I do indeed explain it, but in my
experience many students find it completely unintuitive that
the literals of a type are actually functions, and it takes a
bit of frowning and head-scratching before they finally write
it off as "hey, it's crazy, but you gotta live with it".

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