You can't analyze this stuff with the specifics of a language in mind, or even assume there's a heap, let alone talk about what compiler optimizations apply. Be

You can't analyze this stuff with the specifics of a language in mind, or even assume there's a heap, let alone talk about what compiler optimizations apply. Because if we try to do that, what's our common basis of understanding? You could be talking about gcc and I'd be talking about clang and we'd go in circles. If we limit ourselves to the math, we can agree that a type is a domain that contains certain values and excludes others. But we have to throw out mutability because values, by mathematical definition, are immutable. And once we've got a clear notion of what values are, we can then talk about how many values there are in a type. And that's where I'm coming from in claiming functions are equivalent to containers.