Re:Turing completeness bullshit
by InclinedPlane on Wednesday September 28, 2011 @01:13AM
(#3046570)
Turing completeness concerns itself with the ability of a computer to solve problems that are computable. Modern computers, however, are almost entirely purposed towards interacting with humans and processing data.
Mathematically these "problems" are isomorphic, but the real world concerns itself with issues like correctness, robustness, performance, efficiency, cost, scalability, etc.
The idea of turing completeness compares a 100% perfect program against another 100% perfect program. It does not concern itself at all with efficiency, which is horrific in and of itself, but worse yet it does not concern itself with the difficulty of creating and maintaining the program. Given that this tends to be the overwhelmingly largest factor in the cost of creating software this is a bit of a problem.
Mathematically these "problems" are isomorphic, but the real world concerns itself with issues like correctness, robustness, performance, efficiency, cost, scalability, etc.
The idea of turing completeness compares a 100% perfect program against another 100% perfect program. It does not concern itself at all with efficiency, which is horrific in and of itself, but worse yet it does not concern itself with the difficulty of creating and maintaining the program. Given that this tends to be the overwhelmingly largest factor in the cost of creating software this is a bit of a problem.