2 ms·
One quibble -- I would prefer non-negative(!) terminology, i.e., what is a "nonsymbol"? A collection? A monad? A duration? An event? A process? A closure? Some
by michaelochurch 14y ago
One quibble -- I would prefer non-negative(!) terminology, i.e., what is a "nonsymbol"? A collection? A monad? A duration? An event? A process? A closure? Some category that encompasses all of these? If so, can we find a positive semantic rather than negative?
Good question. I tend to think of it as a stateless (I haven't added state to the model yet, and there are myriad ways of doing it so I'm debating how to do it) object. To apply it to something (symbol or nonsymbol) is like sending a message, and the result of the apply is what it returns.
Nonsymbol is deliberately vague, meaning "we don't know what this is". We need a context to make sense of it (e.g. observe _size, then if that's a natural k, observe 0, ..., k-1; it it's not, it's not in the Vector context) and if it doesn't play by the rules of a known context, we're screwed. We continue to need context when we "array-ize" nonsymbols into natural numbers.
Nonsymbols are like functions; however, a function has a well-defined domain and non-symbols don't. However, the only useful nonsymbols are "function-like" in that some sequence of symbols and known nonsymbols will produce an observable (symbol).