Re: terminology

From: paul c <toledobythesea_at_oohay.ac>
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 00:49:35 GMT
Message-ID: <zwmlg.59736$iF6.42540@pd7tw2no>

Marshall wrote:
> paul c wrote:

>> Marshall wrote:
>>> paul c wrote:
>>>> ...
>>> Certainly there are different contexts in which the term "variable"
>>> is used, and across those different contexts there may be
>>> incompatible meanings. I was speaking of the programming
>>> languages theory ("PLT") context. So I am speaking of regular
>>> data variables, rather than logic variables--they are quite
>>> different.
>>> ...
>> Okay, not trying to give you a hard time,

>
> Didn't think you were; thought you made a valuable point.
>
>

>> as I liked the economical
>> phrasing, it was just that the start of the original msg mentioned "in
>> the c.d.t. context" and i feel a conventional programming language
>> must be a mere servant of that.

>
> You know, it's funny you should mention that.
>
> After responding to your last post, it got me thinking about
> how RT and PLT fit together. It occurred to me years ago
> that the RA would be an extremely useful addition to a
> general purpose programming language, and later, reading
> TTM, it was clear that others had already had the same idea.
>
> TTM is extremely well developed in the RT part. Indeed, it
> is the most thorough treatment of the topic I know of, and
> probably the only one to give it its due importance. But it is
> fairly uninspired in the PLT part. There is no mention of
> closures (in the PLT sense,) lambda, higher-order functions,
> recursion or tail-call optimization, process calculi or even
> message passing, type inference, parametric polymorphism
> (outside of its built-in use with relations) or metaprogramming
> anywhere in the book that I can find. (Although I only have
> the 2nd ed.; haven't gotten to the 3rd ed. yet.)
> ...

I'm hip only to the elementary parts of TTM but would said that it doesn't "proscribe" any of those features, rather it is Tutorial D that doesn't include them.

p Received on Sun Jun 18 2006 - 19:49:35 CDT