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From: simon@rheged.dircon.co.uk (Simon Brooke)
Subject: Re: FIRST CLASS definition
Message-ID: <D6ww3s.2tn@rheged.dircon.co.uk>
Organization: none. Disorganization: total.
References: <1995Mar29.012406.16557@lugb.latrobe.edu.au> <patrick_d_logan.213.0009493C@ccm.jf.intel.com> <3lcvjv$7ih@gap.cco.caltech.edu> <GUDEMAN.95Apr5092607@baskerville.cs.arizona.edu>
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 1995 07:43:03 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.lang.misc:21397 comp.lang.lisp:17492


I'm not pretending I have anything useful to contribute to this
discussion; more nit-picking,really.

In article <GUDEMAN.95Apr5092607@baskerville.cs.arizona.edu>,
David Gudeman <gudeman@cs.arizona.edu> wrote:

>No offense to Chris, but his definition does not capture the concept
>of first-classness.  Numbers have names, yet they are usually thought
>of as first class.  In fact programming languages often have some way
>of naming most of their first class objects.
>
>I would say that an object is first class if
>
>(1) It can be passed to functions and returned from functions.
>
>and
>
>(2) The object can be constructed dynamically.

This seems a bit odd. Numbers can be constructed dynamically? I'm no
platonist, but I'm not happy with this. It doesn't seem to me that a
number can be constructed at all.

Perhaps it would be useful to define 'first class' not in terms of
principles but in terms of pragmatics. What we mean by 'first class'
is something whose increase will not be eaten by the caterpillar, or
rather, whose semantics will not be eaten by the garbage collector.

Isn't it?

-- 
------- simon@rheged.dircon.co.uk (Simon Brooke)

			-- mens vacua in medio vacuo --
