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Misconceptions

These are the misconceptions we collected so far in:

Any LanguageJavaJavaScriptPythonScratch
Misconception Count Does Not Imply Language Difficulty

There is no connection between the number of misconceptions listed here and the difficulty of the corresponding programming language. The effort we spent on collecting misconceptions is very different for different languages. It would be inappropriate to reason about the quality of languages based on the number of misconceptions in this collection.

BaseCaseNotNeeded
Scratch
BaseCaseNotNeeded
Recursive computations do not necessarily need a base case
CompareBooleanToConstant
Scratch
CompareBooleanToConstant
To test whether an expression evaluates to true or false, one must compare it to a constant
ConditionalIsSequence
Scratch
ConditionalIsSequence
If-then-else block is equivalent to sequence of two if-then blocks
ElseAlwaysExecutes
Scratch
ElseAlwaysExecutes
The else branch of an if-then-else block always executes
EqualityOperatorComparesListIdentities
Scratch
EqualityOperatorComparesListIdentities
(list a) = (list b) compares the identities of list a and list b
EqualityOperatorComparesOnlyTypes
Scratch
EqualityOperatorComparesOnlyTypes
() = () compares only the types of its operands
ExpressionAssigns
Scratch
ExpressionAssigns
An expression that reads a variable also updates its value after the evaluation
ListLengthCannotBeZero
Scratch
ListLengthCannotBeZero
A list cannot have a length of 0 items
ListsHomogeneous
Scratch
ListsHomogeneous
All items in a list must have the same type
MissingElseTerminates
Scratch
MissingElseTerminates
Blocks following an if without else will not execute if the condition is false
RepeatDistributes
Scratch
RepeatDistributes
Each block in a loop is repeated individually
ResetStateEachLoopIteration
Scratch
ResetStateEachLoopIteration
The computation of all loop iterations starts from the state before the loop
ResetStateEachProgramExecution
Scratch
ResetStateEachProgramExecution
Running a Scratch program first resets the state of the world and then executes the program

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