Isn’t every programming language simply a spec? C and C++ are infamous for just being a spec, with lots of undefined portions resulting in undefined behavior. A

Isn’t every programming language simply a spec? C and C++ are infamous for just being a spec, with lots of undefined portions resulting in undefined behavior. And if every programming language is a spec, should we inhibit the flexibility of what you can do in them? (I think the answer here is no, but maybe there’s a good reason for limiting what you can do) Edit: Additionally, it takes very little to define a specification that leads to emergent behavior. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s been awhile, but all you need for a turing machine is a way to store and read memory, and move the tape (instruction pointer) if I remember right. If that’s correct, you can come up with an infinitely complex machine with 3 instructions (provided you have an infinite amount of tape).