Re: bindings and assignments

["Perry E. Metzger" <address@hidden>]

Michael Sperber <sperber@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de> writes:
> Perry> What I'm really looking for is a pair of definitions with a bit
> Perry> more formalism that I can point people to.
> 
> What kind of formalism do you have in mind?

Nothing deep -- just something unambiguous and straightforward for the
beginner.

One of the problems in the brave new world of high level languages is
that there aren't good explanations for beginners of concepts like
"binding", "first class continuation", etc. I remember first
encountering call/cc when reading the explanation in R4RS and very
seriously misunderstanding what sort of state was being preserved.
I feel that I understand these concepts now, but I'm still not sure
that I'm good enough at explaining them to beginners -- very clear
definitions are probably of great use in doing that.


-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry@piermont.com