[BUG]Collection>>removeAll:

Richard A. O'Keefe ok at cs.otago.ac.nz
Tue Aug 27 01:34:02 UTC 2002


I wrote:
	I wish people wouldn't use the term "SIDE-effect" for what is the
	MAIN effect of an operation.  It's an important distinction.  Just as
	when a doctor prescribes you a drug, the SIDE effects of that drug are
	almost certainly not intended by her, so when an operation has effects
	other than its main defined purpose, those side effects may well not be
	intended by the user.
"Andrew C. Greenberg" <werdna at mucow.com> retorted:
	"Side-effect," as used here, is a long-standing term of art used in 
	imperative and quasi-functional languages to distinguish between the 
	returned answer of a message send and the impact of the message send on 
	the state of the object.  I am not inclined to adopt new jargon to 
	simply for the purpose of sophistic advocacy.
	
In fact I am using the term precisely the way it was used in the 1960s.
I spent much of this morning in the library checking older books to make
sure my memory wasn't playing tricks on me.




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