Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits

Re:Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to pre... by paulddraper on Friday February 28, 2020 @09:02AM (#22442787)

I internally editorialized your first statement to be "all the possible [finite] byte sequences contain all the possible programs".

Because you cannot enumerate all infinite byte sequences, according to Cantor's diagonal argument as linked earlier. [1]

Calling certain numerical representations "computer programs" in no way changes the fundamentals. There is no way -- no matter how clever your encoding -- to enumerate all real numbers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor%27s_diagonal_argument

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Re:Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to pre... by shkkmo on Friday February 28, 2020 @09:15AM (#22442875)

I am not the person you were originally responding to.

You don't have to enumerate all real numbers to create a mapping from real numbers to infinite byte sequences.

I am merely pointing out that the first statement only becomes false if you editorialize it to "all the possible [finite] byte sequences contain all the [infinite] possible programs". If you treat the meaning of "possible" consistently in that sentence, I believe it remains true regardless of whether you define infinity as possible or not.

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Re:Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to pre... by paulddraper on Friday February 28, 2020 @12:20PM (#22444365)

Yes, you're right. I did not do a clear job of explaining the flaw.

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