I'm not a good example of the computer community. But I can suggest that the concept is related, but not identical to yours. To me, referential opacity would imply a loss of control over what happened when a reference was used (accessed or modified). It's a kind of "fire and forget" operation. There are various "computer" context where the implications of such would mean something practical.
In the context of concurrency, that would imply that you don't know whether the the reference had or still has the same value it had when you accessed it and you don't know when the value will percolate out to whoever else depends on it when you modify it. In the context of object orientation, it implies "encapsulation", the separation of what you see on the outside from what actually goes on inside an object. In the context of our iteration vs. recursion discussion, it implies that there are (may be) hidden states that are modified by accessing or assigning values to the reference. I'm sure there are more. Nicholas Thompson wrote at 04/17/2013 10:07 AM: > In my (leetle) world, referential opacity refers to ambiguities that > arise in intentional utterances ... utterances of the form, "Jones > believes (wants, thinks, hopes, etc.) that X is the case. " They are > opaque in that they tell us nothing about the truth of X. So, for > instance, "Jones believes that there are unicorns in central park" > tells us neither that such a thing as a horse with a horn in its > forehead exists (because Jones may confuse unicorns with squirrels) or > that there are any "unicorns" in central park, whatever Jones may > conceive them to be (because Jones may be misinformed). > > > > What does the computer community think "referential opacity" means. Are > there statements in computer code that take the form , "from the point > of view of circuit A, switch S has value V". And do have later to worry > that somewhere, later in the program, some other circuit, circuit B will > encounter switch S and take it to have the value V? -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. -- Benjamin Franklin ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
