A short time ago, in a nearby thread, Larry Wall wrote: > Perhaps we should just explain continuations in terms of time travel.
Funny. I wrote a message to this effect the other night, but decided not to send it (too tired to decide if I was talking sense or nonsense). I was about to propose that 'continuation' is too long a word for lazy Perl folk to bandy around at will, and possibly too ivory tower for most people to grok. > Another way of looking at it is that a continuation is a hypothesis > about the future, and calling the continuation is a way of saying > "oops" about that hypothesis. My suggestion was along the lines of using ".past", ".now" and ".future" to reference the calling, current and future continuations, respectively. I also wondered if ".here" and ".there" would somehow fit in to reference the current context, or remote context of a continuation. I was thinking along the lines of a continuation being a "here and now", a collection of space and time (or in the context of a continuation, the shape and state of the program) bundled up to be transported safely over "there" to a future "now" where it can be unpackaged and used much like a wormhole. Maybe a continuation is like a nipple pierced in the fabric of space and time through which many different threads can be strung? Or like a Quantum Entanglement - a Bose-Einstein Condensate spread along the length of an camel's hair, merrily transporting perlons back and forth? But I must admit that my understanding of continuations (and the fabric of reality) is incomplete, and quite possibly flawed, being limited to what I've read on this list and read (but mostly not understood) in Appel's book. I'm sure I don't yet understand how it all fits together, and I certainly can't see how to make the syntax fall into place. That's a job for a linguist and a mad scientist. :-) > Basically, we need to find the right oversimplification to make people > think they understand it. Absolutely. But talking about time travel, particuarly in the future, half-past-imperfect, stepping-sideways-through-time tense will never having to had been a simple matter for us to hoov comprehended. [*] Now I know I'm talking nonsense, so I'll stop right here and now. :-) A [*] said with a tip of the hat to the fond memory of Douglas Adams
