Why not allow empty code blocks?
Rustom Mody
rustompmody at gmail.com
Wed Aug 3 08:16:06 EDT 2016
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!
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