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I'm not entirely sure about that. Simulink solves an ODE (more or less) system internally. How did you write Pong in it, with interactive controls? I'm also no

by wenc 8y ago

I'm not entirely sure about that. Simulink solves an ODE (more or less) system internally. How did you write Pong in it, with interactive controls? I'm also not sure if Simulink (without S-functions, .m or any external programming language) is Turing complete, and even if it is, Turing-completeness is a very low bar for a programming system. Not trying to be contrarian, but from my experience, despite its many logic subsystems, Simulink isn't really meant to be a general purpose programming system so much as a simulation system for time-varying outputs. It's difficult to impossible to write most normal programs in it.

Junk_Collector 8y ago
I wrote pong by encoding the ball position as a continuous complex variable and used a star chart (I-Q) with minimal persistence as the output. The paddle inputs were just variable sliders bound to a limit threshold equation. Ball motion was implemented as a normal physical system of momentum and boundaries. Simulink models are Turing complete. You can set a discrete clock simulation (very common with the DSP toolbox) and implement Flip-Flops/Boolean logic. They are also for lack of a better term, Shannon complete, that is they have all the analog components to satisfy general function computability. They also have flow control outside of those conditions and full memory storage. If you were infinitely bored and long lived, you could write Windows in Simulink flow logic and run the modeler to make a VM. I agree with you here. Simulink absolutely isn't meant to be a general purpose programming language. It's an extremely domain specific programming language but one that in it's specific domain offers considerable advantages over textual programming. I don't want to advocate writing software in Simulink because it's a bad idea, and I only do it myself in very limited cases because I have a hobby of analog computing and Simulink is very good for that at a certain level of abstraction. Mostly, I just take umbrage with the Article and the author's reasoning. Simulink is a counterpoint to some of his arguments but those counterpoints were made well elsewhere in the thread so I was just providing an example. Sorry if I am starting to drone on or come across hostile.

by wenc 8y ago

Junk_Collector 8y ago

I wrote pong by encoding the ball position as a continuous complex variable and used a star chart (I-Q) with minimal persistence as the output. The paddle inputs were just variable sliders bound to a limit threshold equation. Ball motion was implemented as a normal physical system of momentum and boundaries. Simulink models are Turing complete. You can set a discrete clock simulation (very common with the DSP toolbox) and implement Flip-Flops/Boolean logic. They are also for lack of a better term, Shannon complete, that is they have all the analog components to satisfy general function computability. They also have flow control outside of those conditions and full memory storage. If you were infinitely bored and long lived, you could write Windows in Simulink flow logic and run the modeler to make a VM. I agree with you here. Simulink absolutely isn't meant to be a general purpose programming language. It's an extremely domain specific programming language but one that in it's specific domain offers considerable advantages over textual programming. I don't want to advocate writing software in Simulink because it's a bad idea, and I only do it myself in very limited cases because I have a hobby of analog computing and Simulink is very good for that at a certain level of abstraction. Mostly, I just take umbrage with the Article and the author's reasoning. Simulink is a counterpoint to some of his arguments but those counterpoints were made well elsewhere in the thread so I was just providing an example. Sorry if I am starting to drone on or come across hostile.