Re: A modern view of the halting problem

"Charles A. Crayne" wrote:

In 1936, Alan Turing presented a proof that it is possible to write a
program such that it is not possible to determine if the program will eventually
halt.

You forgot an essential fact: a program running on a computer
with unlimited resources. So the halting problem has nothing to
do with existing computers: there never was and never will be
a computer with an infinite amount of memory and for any program
running on a system with a finite amount of resources the halting
problem is trivial to solve.

Randy know this and he also know that HLA isn't an assembler (or
more precise: the HLA system (hla.exe + backend assembler) isn't
an assembler and the HLA language isn't an assembly language).
Now, for a language it is surely an advantage to be not an
assembly language, but HLA still is so primitive compared to
a real HLL, so nobody would use it as a replacement for a HLL.
On the other side many students would be happy to use this
simple HLL instead of the unloved assembler. So, if Randy
wants that somebody uses HLA, he has to call it an "assembler"
even if he knows better himself.
.

Relevant Pages

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