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On Mon, Apr 9, 2018 at 7:32 PM, Coda Highland <chighland@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 9, 2018 at 12:19 PM, Francisco Olarte
> <folarte@peoplecall.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Apr 9, 2018 at 3:08 PM, Dirk Laurie <dirk.laurie@gmail.com> wrote:
>> ...
>>> In fact, why have Lua at all since a Turing machine can do everything?
>> Because you cannot implement a Turing Machine in a normal computer?
...
> You can implement a sufficiently large finite approximation of a Turing Machine.

You cannot do everything with that. I knew that, and I suspect the OP
knows both my previous line and yours. I did not suspect you would
fall for that.

> On the other hand, a Turing Machine (even a finite one) is a
> ridiculously inefficient beast, and you can't implement a Turing
> Machine optimizer in a Turing Machine. (You CAN implement one that
> optimizes for the capabilities of a given hardware implementation, but
> you by definition cannot make a Turing Machine whose purpose is to
> make another Turing Machine that is capable of violating the rules of
> a Turing Machine.) So where the rubber meets the road, you're gonna
> need a programming language that isn't a Turing Machine. :P

Which other hand? You cannot implement a turing machine in a normal
computer, you cannot do everything ( meaning compute everything ) with
a finite turing machine ( or with any finite machine, someone is going
to find a problem which overflows, in fact I'm nearly sure that has
already been done ).

What I was trying to point is that we should not slide into that level
of abstraction. Clearly not successful.

Also, you say "you cannot implement an optimizer" followed by "(You
CAN implement one", contradiction? Did you forgot some qualifier? ( an
optimizer does not need to violate any rule )....

See, sliding away, that's why I disliked the TM direction, stopping now.

Francisco Olarte.