Suspendables¶
On the previous page, we made a cooking recipe suspendable. A cooking recipe is analogous to a python function and a suspendable recipe is analogous to suspendable function in python.
This is where programming becomes more complex than cooking. A suspendable function requires a lot more design thought than a suspendable recipe. We will see in the next few pages that a suspendable function cannot be the same type of entity as a simple function.
Let's not design our suspendable function just yet. Instead, let's think of an abstract python entity called suspendable or suspendable entity, which may or may not be related to a plain, vanilla python function. In other words, a suspendable entity could either be a python function, or a python class, or something else entirely.
Suspendable (or Suspendable Entity)
A python entity containing an ordered sequence of instructions that can suspend and resume execution while maintaining its state.
This definition of a suspendable entity is purposefully vague and incomplete. It does not fully nail down the specification of the suspendable entity. This leaves us a lot of room for design. We can design many distinct entities that can satisfy the above definition. To phrase it yet another way, there can be many different implementations of a suspendable entity.
Any implementation of a suspendable entity needs to answer the following questions. The rest of this chapter will try to answer these two questions.
Control¶
Who gets the control when a suspendable entity suspends execution ?
Syntax¶
What syntax is needed to correctly define a suspendable entity ?
Created: 2022-09-13