Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!aurora!labrea!glacier!jbn
From: jbn@glacier.STANFORD.EDU (John B. Nagle)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Thunks (was Timothy Leary, that old cyberpunk.)
Message-ID: <17307@glacier.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: 11 Feb 88 05:15:24 GMT
References: <838@astroatc.UUCP>
Reply-To: jbn@glacier.UUCP (John B. Nagle)
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 13

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