In programming language design, a first-class citizen (also object, entity, or value), in the context of a particular programming language, is an entity that can be constructed at run-time, passed as a parameter, returned from a subroutine, or assigned into a variable. In computer science the term reification is used when referring to the process (technique, mechanism) of making something a first-class object.
The term was coined by Christopher Strachey in the context of “functions as first-class citizens” in the mid-1960s.
Read more about First-class Citizen: Definition, Examples, Second and Third Class Objects
Famous quotes containing the word citizen:
“The very existence of government at all, infers inequality. The citizen who is preferred to office becomes the superior to those who are not, so long as he is the repository of power, and the child inherits the wealth of the parent as a controlling law of society.”
—James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851)