so-called Turing-Equivalence

[Francois-Rene Rideau]

>: Tim Bradshaw <tfb@tfeb.org> on comp.lang.lisp
> Another formalism of equivalent power to a UTM is the lambda calculus
I'm _sick_ of hearing such a meaningless statement
of "being of equivalent power to a UTM" repeated over and over again
as a bad excuse for bad programming language design.

I question the meaningfulness of your term "Turing-equivalence".
What definition of it do you use, if any?
Equivalent _up to what transformation_?
Do these transformation correspond to anything _remotely_ meaningful
*in presence of interactions with the external world (including users)*?

Oh yeah, if you only need to write a One Program,
that will answer the One Question,
but you must choose your machine before to learn the One Question,
then I can see interest in considering some form of Turing-equivalence
(to be specified, still), as a meaningful concept: it tells you
what class of machines you may "optimally" choose, in some sense.
But then, I can do much better, and readily tell you
the One Answer to the One Question, which is 42.

If you need more than one program, if you already have a lot of questions,
and if more questions will come constantly, depending on what you do,
then Turing-equivalence should certainly not be a sufficient criterion
for your choice of programming system
(considering language and operating system separately is a vast crookery),
although it will most likely be a necessary criterion.

I agree I still need to write a formal paper on the matter. Meanwhile,
for a few hints on how to do better than so-called "Turing-equivalence",
read this informal paper of mine:
        Metaprogramming and Free Availability of Sources
        http://www.tunes.org/~fare/articles/ll99/index.en.html

I don't think Alan Turing would have appreciated his name being associated
to the loads of non-sense hidden behind the words "Turing-equivalence".
But when you commit suicide, you cannot defend yourself anymore.
Damn British bigots who killed Turing!

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Some people will argue that since there's no evidence either way whether
the smurf fboinks or not, it's ok to firmly believe that indeed it does.
Such people are insane, often as the result of a life-long endoctrination.