I meant to say:
Now the thing is that instruction code is a kind of enumeration (as
are most of the referential codes) but the value data may - in many
cases - be something more.

But I am both right and wrong about that.

I wanted to ask the rhetorical question: Can an instruction code be
something more than an enumeration just like I said that a value can
be?

However, after I formed this question I realized that value data can
be something more than an enumeration just because it can refer to a
dynamic system that can be superimposed on it and that system can be
encoded somewhere else in the instructions or in the program. So if
the data is typed, for example, then the extra power of the values are
due to the algorithms that are used with the that type of data so data
can be "something more," as I said, only because it can refer to other
dynamic or multiple step instructions.

However, with thought those systems may exist in other minds even if
they are not explicitly described in a particular mind. So I can say
something about the compressor in a jet engine with a jet propulsion
engineer even though I don't know most of the details about a jet
engine or about the compressors of jet engines.

So in one sense I was wrong. The value data is not something more
glorious than an enumeration. Technically I was right. The fact that
certain data can be used in special ways does not mean that it is just
an enumeration. And I am still right in the spirit of the idea, that
some static data can implicitly refer to a set of instructions on how
to use it.

So then value data can also refer to more than one set of instructions.
Jim Bromer


On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 6:29 PM, Jim Bromer <[email protected]> wrote:
> Look at the code for a computer program. Certain values represent
> instructions and others represent data and others represent various
> references to data. Suppose you had a computer that was nearly as
> primitive as a Turing Machine. Could you convert all the program so
> that the static data were all replaced by instruction values and the
> programming instructions were replaced by value and reference data. I
> mean could this be virtually accomplished with something like a
> universal turing machine so none of the original data was preserved in
> its original forms? Is there a way to make the instruction code do the
> stuff that the parameters do and a way to make the parameters do the
> stuff the instructions do - for that program?
>
> The point is that the distinction between instruction code and
> parameter code is not set in stone. Now the thing is that instruction
> code is a kind of enumeration (as are most of the references) but the
> value code in the instruction data may - in many cases - be something
> more.
>
> Is this off topic?
>
> Jim Bromer


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