[tpm] UNS: Re: Complexity and language

[Abram Hindle]

On 12-06-07 10:54 PM, arocker at Vex.Net wrote:
>> But seriously, I'm talking about more than 'field validation' but
>> algorithmic equivalence (or non-equivalence... where a+b != b+a)
>> [Or would that be 'temporal significance'?]
>>
> That's more domain-specific. Once you've got sensible input, (for whatever
> is your definition of "sensible"), do they map to the output you want?
>
> In your example, the possible sets would presumably be "  " (nothing
> happens), "a ", " a", "b ", " b", "ab", "ba", and perhaps multiple
> occurrences of one event boiling down to a single event, (e.g. "bbba" =
> "ba"). Then the problem becomes writing a test generator that is less
> complex than the thing it's testing. (That way lies recursion.) Jigs
> should not cost more than the product, unless they're going to get
> re-used.
>
> I think we're wandering off-topic a bit here; I was trying to determine
> what sort of problems demand more complex structures and processes than
> simple lists and basic logic and arithmetic operations, and how to order
> the increasing demands.
I've got my own nuanced opinion about language complexity ;-)

http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/archive/2012/5/7

The result: natural language to be more complex than programming
languages :)

But that's not really a great answer to the ideas of complexity
expressed in this thread.

abram



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