li51x@sdcc3.UUCP (li51x) (02/18/85)
Whether or not a serious programmer advocates such a move is probably irrelevant to the linguistic trend to borrow terms from one context and endow them with novel meanings in another setting. Consider the terminology used in mathematics. Do you suppose that a Real number is less tangible than an Imaginary number, or that an improper fraction is somehow less proper than a proper one? So long as one makes clear the definition in the new context, you probably won't get sued for fraud. :} (Maybe someone would care to "grep" through a legal journal on that one!) --Michelle >A recent writer says: > > ...... I want to talk about programming idioms. > > These are code sequences which produce some useful non-obvious result. > > I react when I see the word ``idiom'' used this way.... > > But, is there any serious programmer who advocates the introduction of new > meanings for programming phrases that are different from the combined > meanings of the constituent parts? As originally seen in : (at least *.lang) Newsgroups: net.lang.apl,net.lang.c,net.lang.lisp,net.lang.pascal,net.lang.mod2,net.lang.prolog,net.lang.st80