work on HLL

David E. Manifold dem@bespin.ml.org
Tue, 6 May 1997 22:49:51 -0700 (PDT)


To contribute to the Tunes project, I sit down once in a while and try to
understand the HLL.

In doing this, I have come up with a number of questions that I would like
to pose to Fare, as he is always wanting to "improve the web pages".

What is an attribute?  I can't seem to figure out the difference between
this and a function.  You say the implementation may make the difference
meaningless; but I don't quite understand the theoretical difference.

Does an object have one "real" context, with all the other contexts being
just views onto the "real" context that limit and restrict (by removing
some semantics)?

Does an object have one "definition" meta-object that defines
specifications for the object?  Is this the same as the "real" context?

Do you refer to "type-system" and "context" to be the same meta-object,
that defines semantics of the object?  Are these words interchangeable?

At what point is an object under scrutiny of correctness; i.e. when is it
proven?  Never, until user requested; or automatically, when created or
defined?

Is this an example of abstraction: taking an integer addition function and
abstracting it to work with floats?

David E. Manifold / Admin, Bespin.ML.ORG
e-mail: dem@pacificrim.net