Hi,
this is a question for someone with a reasonably good english dictionary I guess. I wonder if these words, commonly used in texts about artificial intelligence or object oriented programming, are regular english words or if they are jargon, i.e. if one can find them in a standard english dictionary or only in specific computer science dictionaries.

In case you don't know the words, here is what they are used for:

an "instance" is the extension of a concept. in OO-programming the concept is called a class and a particular object created according to that concept is an instance of the class.

the verbe "instantiation" means (in OO-Programming) to create an instance.

I know that in german as well as french these two words are jargon. They are not found in any standard dictionaries with this specific meaning. The "normal" meaning of "instance" in both french and german is "competent authority", especially for judicial authorities...

What about it in english?

Thanks for your help!

The word "instance" is in all dictionaries I've looked in. Take the following for example: http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=instance

Hi,
of course the word "instance" is found in dictionaries, I also have it in my own little english dictionary which tells me that instance means example (just like dictionary.com).

But "example" is not the meaning of instance as it is used in computer science, is it?

Indeed I found that opinion in "Thomas Irlbeck, Beck EDV-Berater A-Z, Computer-Lexikon, 3rd édition 1998", who writes regarding the german word "Instanz" as used in OO programming theory, that it's the translation of the english word "instance" which means "example" and so he thinks the more apropriate german translation would be "Exemplar".

But is this right? I mean, you can't say that an object is an example of a class, can you?

To me the word "instance" as used in computer science has a different meaning, the one I outlined in my first post, which isn't amongst the meanings given in dictionary.com... So, it's jargon, isn't it?

The use of the word instance in the form of an example is derived from interpretation of "for instance". When you speak a "for instance" you "instatiate" a false situation which can be interpreted as an "example", but what you are doing is creating a visual/mental aid. I think, from my own personal internal dictionary, that to instantiate is to create and an instance is the creation of a specific "thing".

For instance (pun intended), if I create a chair I am also instatiating a chair. A chair is a thing we can visualize and describe properties for, to instatiate a chair is to create that chair.

I probably only succeeded in confusing the matter, eh?

Scott

instance n. an example or single occurence of something; a particular case. v. cite as an example.

instantiation n. (usu. philosophy) the process of representing a universal or abstract concept as or by an instance.

I don't know about other dictionaries, but OED has no problem with those.

Originally posted by astra4
I wonder if these words, commonly used in texts about artificial intelligence or object oriented programming, are regular english words or if they are jargon, i.e. if one can find them in a standard english dictionary or only in specific computer science dictionaries.
You could probably make an argument for either (it is 'jargon' or multiple meaning), though in this case, it may not be widely known. Words often change in time, with meanings added such as 'web' (which I'm pretty sure was thought of as something a spider made until recently).

Originally posted by Chicken
Words often change in time, with meanings added such as 'web' (which I'm pretty sure was thought of as something a spider made until recently).

Of course, I don't think anyone would have thought that the "world wide web" was made by a spider.

Speaking of spiders, when did they get renamed as robots?

Hmmmm, maybe from how the spider (virtual) 'crawls' throughout the 'web' looking for things automatically. A bit of a stretch to call it a 'robot'...

Originally posted by cperciva
Speaking of spiders, when did they get renamed as robots? Nothing new about that. The "Robots Exclusion Protocol" was developed out of a consensus built on the "robots mailing list" -- in 1994.

Even back then the two words were used interchangeably. Actually the one term for whatever those are called that has seemingly dropped out of common usage is "wanderers." You almost never see anyone use that anymore.

Originally posted by JayC
Nothing new about that. The "Robots Exclusion Protocol" was developed out of a consensus built on the "robots mailing list" -- in 1994.

Gosh. 1994? It seems like just yesterday. ;)

Still, I don't recally anyone using the term "spider" in several years; a shame, since I think that word is far more colourful than "robot".

Originally posted by cperciva
Still, I don't recally anyone using the term "spider" in several yearsReally? That's surprising; my impression is certainly that it's the more commonly used term, in search engine optimization circles anyway. If you miss that colorful word, check any search engine glossary or faq and I'm sure you'll find it there! :)

OK, now I'm curious:
A search on google for "search engine spiders OR robots" finds 176,000 pages. A search for "search engine spiders" returns 84,100 results. A search for "search engine robots" brings 128,000. But I think that result is skewed: many of those are referring to the "robots exclusion protocol." In actually common usage, I'd still say "spider" is more common.

I agree that "spider" is a better term, somehow a robot would seem to be something much more complex. Really, though, I don't like any of the commons terms (spider, robot, crawler, etc.) because they all imply that there's a "thing" actually travelling around, when in fact it's just a process running on the one machine on which it's been instantiated.

Originally posted by cperciva
instance n. an example or single occurence of something; a particular case. v. cite as an example.

instantiation n. (usu. philosophy) the process of representing a universal or abstract concept as or by an instance.

I don't know about other dictionaries, but OED has no problem with those.

Thanks cperciva, this is what I was after :)

Especially this definition of instantiation seems to match the meaning as used in computer science.

So I suppose the definition of instance does too, it's not really a technical definition but I guess it fits, an object is a particular case of a class, somehow,...