I'm going through Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs right now. One thing Abelson really enjoys is blurring the distinction between procedures and data. Coming from other languages with higher-order functions, I'm comfortable with the idea. For instance, I understand map, filter, reduce, etc. However, he takes the idea much further. He's just as likely to put a bunch of procedures into an abstract data structure as he is to put data into an abstract data structure. Since procedures can carry with them a bit of data via closure, it all works out. Even he calls such procedures "objects". He loves to mix up data and procedures, because he says it "doesn't really matter." Thinking about that, that's somewhat true and somewhat untrue. Clearly, procedures can be passed around as data, and that's fine. However, there is a difference. If a procedure takes a value and returns a value, you can think of that procedure as data
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