jbn@glacier.STANFORD.EDU (John B. Nagle) (02/11/88)
In article <838@astroatc.UUCP> jojo@astroatc.UUCP (Jon Wesener) writes: > >and most of all, think. He also talked about thunks, which are bad >thoughts/ideas that stick around and which a good dose of acid will >soften up and break free. No, a "thunk" is the mechanism by which the value of an object is obtained. The term was coined by Donald Knuth to describe an implementation mechanism first used for ALGOL-60, and later used in object-oriented programming systems. See Knuth's CACM article titled simply "Thunks", circa 1969. John Nagle