3 ms·

I think the post is just a pedant/gotcha argument that is correct only in the “technically correct” sense, but is otherwise useless, as the same argument applie

• mort96 2y ago
  > the same argument applies to literally any “Turing complete” system. Only physical "Turing complete" systems. JavaScript, as specified by ECMA, is properly Turing machine; you can express a program which will allocate an arbitrary amount of objects. In the "JavaScript abstract machine", there is no upper limit. In C, there is necessarily a finite upper limit to the amount of objects allocated, since every object needs a unique address and addresses are represented by finite-bit pointers. That means that the "C abstract machine" as defined by ISO can not even in principle allocate arbitrarily many objects. (And yes, this all means that any Turing-machine-like systems built in the real world aren't proper Turing machines, since strictly speaking, a Turing machine is a theoretically construct with an infinitely long tape.)