Don't be so literal, it's just a loose association to tie the three together. And I wouldn't call it a bad meme -- more like a mental trick or reminder to help get past a mental block. Sometimes it's more important to forge ahead and then circle back. Once he starts getting the assignments right things should start to become clearer, and he'll be ready to circle back and clear up any remaining misunderstandings. That's my take on it. That's based on my college experience where I had C before Assembler. Pointers were so confusing in C, but then they made sense in Assembler. Not a problem since then. And and as a side note, having C first may have made it easier to pick up on assembler (a lot of things "clicked"). Anyway, the Op can stay confused about () vs. {} in %hash= context, or he can get past that, and then later on learn that the parens are not so directly tied to lists after all. No offense, but the "(LIST)" pseudo-idiom does a pretty good job of getting people to a level where they can grasp what's really going on.
Elda Taluta; Sarks Sark; Ark Arks