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Completely true. In fact nothing is hard in the computing world. Everything is doable. And if someone says it's not doable, they are not trying hard enough.
by pkrumins 17y ago
Completely true. In fact nothing is hard in the computing world. Everything is doable. And if someone says it's not doable, they are not trying hard enough.
- scott_s 17y agoWrite a program that determines whether or not any arbitrary program goes into an infinite loop.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- pkrumins 17y agoYou can still try hard and cover many cases where it would go into an infinite loop. And then try even harder and cover even more cases.
- scott_s 17y agoAnd you still won't have written a program that determines whether any arbitrary program goes into an infinite loop.
- pkrumins 17y agoYou're right. I wouldn't have.
- warfangle 17y agoIf we can write a program that translates said arbitrary program into the rules for an n-state, m-symbol turing machine, where n = (2|3|4|5) and m = 2, then yes - we can determine if the program terminates or not. We can make some fuzzy guesses whether or not the program terminates or not in other state/symbol combinations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busy_beaver http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busy_beaver If we ever did write said program that could determine whether any /arbitrary/ program is infinite, then we have solved the halting problem. And that would be quite something.
- chromatic 17y ago> In fact nothing is hard in the computing world. Allison's point is instead that the combination of the perception that compilers are difficult and the relative paucity of tools to make writing compilers easier is a vicious cycle which writing better tools might fix.