Re: Steps beyond "Hello World" program
From: Ben Measures (saint_abroadremove_at_removehotmail.com)
Date: 09/12/04
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Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2004 16:11:48 GMT
Dan Tex1 wrote:
> From: "!Q" no_spam@null.org
>
>>If you want to prove a language is really a programming language you
>>need to prove that it is Turing complete. This means that you can
>>implement any Turing machine in that language (of course you must limit
>>the Turing machines to those that do not require an infinite tape).
>>
>>HTML is not a programming language because it is not Turing complete.
>>
>>For more information see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing-complete.
>
> I don't consider HTML a language because it can't and doesn't do the things
> that "conventional" languages do. To me... HTML is more like a glorified
> Font processor.
What about XSLT? In appearance it looks similar to HTML, and it doesn't
do the things that "conventional" languages do either.
> On the other hand... what REEEEALLLLY is a computer language???
It's a way to describe an algorithm.
> it doesn't matter whether HTML is a language or not. What matters is... when
> you have some type of a task to do, can HTML accomplish the task
This is the question. How do you know if it can or not? This is where
Turing-completeness comes in.
If it's Turing-complete you can implement any well-defined algorithm in
it. Furthermore, it can perform any calculation any other
Turing-complete language can.
HTML is not Turing-complete. Thus you know that there are algorithms
that cannot be implemented with it.
Strangely enough, XSLT /is/ Turing-complete. In knowing this, we also
know that we can implement any well-defined algorithm in it, and we can
perform any calculation any other Turing-complete language can (such as
C, Java, or C++).
Turing-completeness is so fundamental to computers that programmers
simply cannot ignore it as being something "for geeks".
-- Ben M.
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