def
I dreamed last night that I was learning a new computer language. Somehow I got my hands on the solution to the final exam. I remember looking over the answer and noticing with surprise that I was supposed to use a function. (A function allows you to define a set of steps to be performed, and once stored, reuse them whenever needed.)
I’m not sure where I’m going with this, or why the dream seemed like such a revelation. I’ve spent more than 30 years of my waking hours working with this, and similar concepts. I think my subconscious was trying to tell me something…
My best guess is that I need to do a better job of saving memories for later recall, the equivalent of saving a function for reuse. Recently my daughter and I were reminiscing about her graduation and she reminded me about a day trip that we made together with her sisters. I did not recall the event. I have a feeling that’s because I did not do a good enough job “storing” the memory so it could be “retrieved.” later. It is painful to admit this, but the reason could be that I am a bit too self-absorbed to do a proper job of saving memories of events where I haven’t been the primary instigator or beneficiary. I’m going to work on this.
In the Python language, “def” is the keyword used to “define” a function, Typically a function will “return” a value of some sort, but the use of a return value is optional. When I encode memories I need to be sure and include a return value…
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