RE: Continuations

["Anton van Straaten" <address@hidden>]

Scott McKay wrote:
> I personally don't see why a continuation, with its implicitly
> captured state, is superior to having a session object that
> explicitly captures the state.

Continuations provide choices for the program structure that can't easily be
achieved with explicit session objects.  In particular, continuations allow
the page structure of a web application to be more easily decoupled from the
program structure.

Certainly any problem can be expressed either way - the session object
approach just tends to impose a certain kind of structure on the program,
and an explicit approach to capturing state.

I see continuations as providing a higher-level solution, with the usual
advantages that come along with that.  The disadvantages can depend a lot on
the implementation, and of course "mainstream" continuation-based solutions
barely exist, so it's tough to compare at that level except in theory.

Anton