Re: Continuations

[Paul Graham <address@hidden>]

--Dan Sugalski wrote:

> At 2:09 PM -0700 8/9/03, Serguei Mourachov wrote:
> >But now I have another question about continuations: how useful they are for
> >*masses* of developers?
> >Does typical programmer need to know about and use continuations?
> >What kind of advantages continuations bring into development process?
> 
> No, and none, respectively. They allow for some really powerful 
> techniques, and they make some relatively bizarre things easier (like 
> implementing interpreters, compilers, and dynamic syntax extension) 
> but for most of the stuff you'll do with computers they're not 
> particularly useful.
> -- 

I argued this in my dissertation, but now I think I was wrong.
They're extremely useful for overcoming the statelessness of
CGI scripts.  See 

http://lib1.store.vip.sc5.yahoo.com/lib/paulgraham/bbnexcerpts.txt