It’s always a pleasure reading Euclid’s Elements, Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia and Euler’s works. I love the organization of their materials. They start from basic building blocks and end up building empires. They define the elements of their systems in very clear ways. I therefore, set up this page as an attempt to capture the definitions of some of the building blocks of computer science, in the format used by the sages before my time.
A bit is that which has no part. It is either 1 or 0, and cannot be further broken down into subunits.
A byte is a collection of 8 bits. A byte is a set of 8 bits that exist as a whole.
A value is that which can be broken down into bits and bytes and makes sense as a whole to the computing environment in which it belongs.
A value is a collection of bits or bytes that make sense only as a whole.
A type is a set of values together with the permissible operations that can be performed on itself.
An object is that which has values and by virtue of its values belongs to one or more types. Like an individual in a society, it has an identity and performs operations particular to its types.
A prime object is that whose only parts are its native bits. It’s only values are the bits that form its bulk, and it cannot be expressed as any other object, but bits in a computing system. A prime object is also known as a primtive object, since it cannot be factored into other objects in the system, except its existential bits.
A composite or compound object is that which is made of a collection of one or more prime objects or other objects of its nature, that is other composite objects, which could all be of thesame type or different types and together form a whole.
Any object that forms part of a compound object is called a field or member.
A homogenous composite object is that whose members are of the same type.
A heterongeous composite object is that whose members are of different types.