Synopsis
You have seen, especially in the Higher Order Functions Lecture
lecture, how we can use functions to generalize an operation. Continuations are
another example of this. Many languages have a return keyword to tell the
program to return from a function call with a certain result. What if you could
replace that with a parameter of your own choosing? The result is called a
continuation, and they have enormous power over the execution flow of a
program.
These may well seem abstract to you, but you will recognize them if you ever program in
languages like