Re: terminology

Marshall wrote:
> ...
> 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.)
> ...

(at the risk of exposing my feeble grasp of modern plt lingo):

1. closures - don't views give the same notion of postponement?
2. messages - aren't they somehow equivalent to assignment?
3. recursion - i seem to recall some kind of "with" notation in TD.
4. type inference - i thought the larger part of TTM was about this (even though typing theory is a bit over my head).

These few seem like kind of parallel notions to me and I'm usually wondering whether there are others.

I guess another thing I'm saying is that once a "context" as you put it, is established then we need to realize the terms in that context, e.g., if the context is both of plt and rt, the way one of them realizes a particular notion may look crazy in terms of the other context. Maybe it is foolish to even entertain the marrying of these particular contexts.

p Received on Mon Jun 19 2006 - 12:33:06 CDT