🚀 go-pugleaf

peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes:

>In article <MARKF.91Mar6122504@montreux.ai.mit.edu> markf@zurich.ai.mit.edu writes:
>> In article <R_V9_AC@xds13.ferranti.com> peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>>    In fact, I don't see how a language that isn't interpreted nor object
>>    oriented could be said to have first class functions.

>> Although it is true that most LISP (and Scheme) and purely functional
>> language implementations have interpretors available, there is no
>> dependency relation between that fact and the fact that they have
>> first class functions.  Nor are most of those languages "object
>> oriented".

>I suspect that if you remove the explicit interpreter and examined the
>remaining language, I will still be able to point to a part of the
>language and say "that's the interpreter!". That will be the part that
>takes a closure and executes it. In Forth terms, Lisp has an outer and
>an inner interpreter.

I suspect if you take a C compiler apart, you will look at the stack
and runtime services (e.g. malloc) and say: "that's the interpreter!".
I suspect, however, that you can get most people to agree that there
are compilers for C--and for Scheme.

[On the other hand, it has been said that "Objects are a poor man's
closures", so perhaps you should be making the argument that Scheme is
object based.  Closures are, of course, more general.]


-Ken Dickey					kend@data.uucp