Raul wrote: > The concept of tacit is slippery enough that it's probably worth > quoting the definition you are using, and describing what it is about > the context that makes "tacit" a relevant concept whenever we talk > about it.
Though we all "know what it means", it turns out when you really try to put it in words, tacit is, indeed, difficult to define (or at least it was for me; in a 2009 thread, it took me five attempts and not a few false starts to define the word to my own satisfaction). That said, it is (like many things) significantly easier to describe what tacit is *not*, and it is definitely *not* the kind of code which is quoted and then passed to the conjunction : for evaluation (that is, by definition, *explicit* code). In fact, I would say (and I don't expect I'll generate much controversy), that my comfort level in labelling a piece of code "tacit" is diminished in proportion to the degree which it is quoted, or contains quoted code (which will be, or could be, executed later in the evaluation of the expression). That's not an absolute constraint, of course (no more than "tacit" is a binary quality); witness f`g`[email protected] , for example. But I would argue that using : --that is, the "explicit" operator-- is a significant, and often fatal, blow to a piece of code's status as tacit. -Dan [1] 2009 thread on the definition of "Tacit": http://www.jsoftware.com/pipermail/programming/2009-August/015771.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
