On Wednesday, August 3, 2016 at 5:11:23 PM UTC+5:30, Steven D'Aprano wrote: > On Wednesday 03 August 2016 05:22, Paul Rubin wrote: > > >> The Halting Problem is easily solved for Bloop languages: they always > >> halt. > > > > If Bloop is powerful enough to "solve the halting problem" as you > > describe, that gives it capabilities that Turing-complete languages > > lack. (Of course it also loses some capabilities). > > It only solves it in the sense that it isn't capable of looping forever, so > there's never a question of whether or not a Bloop program will halt: they > all > do. It doesn't have any capabilities that Floop lacks: Floop can solve any > problem that Bloop can solve, plus problems that Bloop cannot. > > In a sense, it's a less extreme version of this: > > Me: "I have here a computer which is immune to all computer viruses, malware > and hostile code, now and in the future!" > > You: "That's great! Turn it on so we can see how it works." > > Me: "Oh, it doesn't turn on. There's no power supply. That was the only way I > could guarantee it wouldn't execute malware: by making sure it couldn't > execute > *anything*." > > While I suppose it is true that a computer that doesn't run is still a > computer, its an abuse of language to say that it has capabilities that > running > computers lack: > > - unhackable > - immune to all viruses > - unaffected by power surges > - data storage is 100% reliable, never lose data again > - instantaneous log-off and shutdown > > :-)
There he comes waddling in… Your cute-n-cudly strawman!! A more realistic analogy would be phones The cellphones we use today often crash The first nokia I used never crashed but could still run out of battery And the round-dial landlines of 30 years ago had not even that problem But correspondingly the functionality: The early landlines could just dial a NUMBER (which you looked up from a dead-tree book) The first cell phones had some rudimentary phone book Nowadays phones do everything a computer can… Including crash! -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
