[Jprogramming] tacit confusion

[Dan Bron]

Though I am quite interested in the topic, I don't have the time right now to get into a long discussion.

But in brief, I was presenting a way to think about tacit code, which purposefully obscured some details.  But to respond to
specific points:

	*  Tacit code can include explicit code, 
	    and explicit code can include tacit code.
	    But a definition is not fully tacit unless
	    all its components are fully tacit. As you said,
	    some primitives produce explicit definitions
	    but these primitives may be called in an tacit
	    context.  However, if that tacit context
	    embeds (carries in its definition) the explicit 
	    result of those primitives, then it is no longer
	    (fully) tacit.  Eg  3 :'blah y' + 3&* or ". bind 'NOUN'
	    etc.  I wrote up a longer treatment of this
	    bullet in the posts I cited earlier.
	
	*  Some primitives are not functional
	     but this is not in the control of the user
	     who writes tacit code.  The fact that
	     some primitives have hidden state
	     (e.g. ? s: !:) should be considered an 
	     implementation detail, and so long
	     as the user himself isn't introducing
	     non-functional or explicit code, he
	     may consider his code tacit.


-Dan