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It actually does imply turing completeness, it just doesn't guarantee it. I know of no build language that builds in the ability to do conditionals and loops th
by crdoconnor 9y ago
It actually does imply turing completeness, it just doesn't guarantee it. I know of no build language that builds in the ability to do conditionals and loops that isn't turing complete. At that point... why bother? Why not just use a good turing complete language and give it some libraries that make building software easier?
There's a lot of times and places where removing turing completeness makes complete sense - configuration, user stories, translation files and simple DSLs that operate in a very restricted problem space, etc. Building software isn't a restricted problem space.
- Someone 9y agoBecause those complete languages are Turing complete. That means, for example, that the build system cannot guarantee that a build will finish, even ignoring that individual steps may run forever. Some argue Dtrace’s scripting language and PDF (and, IIRC, various packet filter languages) are popular because they aren’t Turing complete.
- crdoconnor 9y ago>That means, for example, that the build system cannot guarantee that a build will finish That's impossible anyway because one of the plugins or the core build code may never halt. Abandoning turing completeness shouldn't be about that anyway. It should be done because it's demonstrably not needed to solve a problem.