Talk:First-class function

"Most modern programming languages support functions defined statically at compile time. C additionally supports function pointers, which can be stored in data structures and passed as arguments to other functions. Nevertheless, C is not considered to support first class functions, since in general functions cannot be created dynamically during the execution of a program. The closest analog in C is that of a dynamically compiled function created by a just-in-time compiler, which is compiled as an array of machine language instructions in memory and then cast to a function pointer. However, this technique is specific to the underlying hardware architecture and is therefore neither general nor portable."

I have problems with this. The main thing is that the attempt to find an analog in C seems pointless to me. I wouldn't try to find an analog of 'break' in Lisp, although I'm sure I could find something not too dissimilar if I strained hard enough. In turn, I don't think it's conducive to understanding of the first class function to compare it to something int (*f)(). Of course it is perfectly feasible to write C code to write a bit of C, compile it, put it into a dynamically linked library, open the library and execute it--in fact, this was even easier in BCPL, one of C's percursors, which had extensive dynamic module load and execution capabilities built into its standard library. However this isn't really a first class function, it's just a neat programming trick.