generator/coroutine terminology

[Rustom Mody]

On Monday, March 16, 2015 at 7:10:03 PM UTC+5:30, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> And of course, from a comp science theoretic perspective,
> generators are a kind of subroutine, not a kind of type.

You just showed Marko a few posts back, that
A generator is a special case of an iterator.
And you wrote the iterator with 'class'.
And from python 2.2(?) classes are types.

So I dont know what "comp science theoretic perspective" you are describing...

>From mine:

The generator
def gen():
  yield 1
  yield 2

is much closer to the list (ie data) [1,2]
than to say

def foo():
  print 1
  print 2

The only difference is that the list memoizes the data whereas the generator doesn't.

CLU perspective:
The iterator for a collection of complex_numbers can be used interchangeably with that for an array of integers
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLU_%28programming_language%29
[Note: CLU-iterator ≡ python-generator]

Haskell perspective: 
Lists are by default lazy and memoized.
IOW in Haskell: List ≡ Lazy list ≡ python generator + memoization

Scheme perspective:
Programmer can choose between normal and lazy lists.
Lazy lists are just normal lists + delay/force where
delay x ≡ lambda: x
force x ≡ x()

======================
Anyways...

Yes 15 years are past.
I dont expect the def can be revoked now.
[As far as I am concerned its a minor wart]
But the mess around the docs can certainly be cleaned up.