Killer song, thanks for making me discover it! And thanks for the kind repost, while I'm am it! :)

2. made me want to retry Brothers of Karamazov;
Also interesting that erzhälen (to "narrate", recount) is so etymologically close to bezahlen (to pay)

Auto-claim rewards is peak cynicism. "These are a pain, so we'll take out the inconvenience of having you unlock them"

The Eastern Bloc lives on to this day, in some respects

Time well spent! 😬
Snezhnaya Koroleva when?

this is wow

P.S. This morning, I still wasn't sure I had answered correctly, so I had to test it. Phew!

I also love firing up Python and solving a quick task without thinking much about it. But the hardware reality is much messier and technically full of traps; it's also capable of speed like nothing else, so it feels like a shame to lose touch with the machine and what makes it extraordinary. 7/done

So the answer is that the interpreter will print:
5 10
(aka the original values)

The question in itself shows bad programming practice, but more generally it highlights well the problem of abstracting away from the closeness with the machine, for whatever reason (ie. CONVENIENCE). 6/almost done

Usually, all languages pass-by-value, except C++ (passes by reference). Because of how it's built, Python passes kinda both("pass-by-assignment"), then decides at run-time (OFC IT DOES) what kind of object it is. If it's a "primitive"/immutable, it will pass-by-value, like here!
5/thread

So we get these particular "objects" that are "primitives" (in name only): the a & b vars. The crucial question becomes: what gets passed to the function?
1. the "primitive"? (aka the value)
2. or the "object"? (aka the reference)

The answer is: BOTH *false cheer* 4/thread

Obviously, the fn returns nothing, so why would those vars change (named the same as the parameters just to confuse)? B/c in Python EVERYTHING is an OBJECT. If I called the same-ish function on an "instantiated" class object and its attributes, those WOULD be altered, even with no return. 3/thread

This is contrary to something like C, which has static typing and relatively stringent compiler checks, array bounds notwithstanding. In C, this question would be, in modern parlance, EZ. 2/thread

Fun set!!

Tyvm! 🌻

On a kind of side note, Lamartine had some ambivalent positions on prayer. He wrote a pretty poem on it (La prière) and he also has this quote:
"Dieu fût-il sourd, et sa grandeur de ne pas nous entendre, notre grandeur à nous serait de le prier quand même."

Since we were on the subject :P

Ah, that's a nice insight into your process/RP. For me the theme of your set was formed by the 3rd's prayer: going back to the others, I saw a strength/arrogance that can only be conferred by prayer. (similar to your critique)