Author: Martin Giepmans
Date: 14:29:03 12/23/02
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On December 23, 2002 at 16:28:24, Janosch Zwerensky wrote: > >>I wonder if there is a "real" difference between >> >>(a) a program that changes itself (even in a big way) >>(b) a normal program that has code like "if a then x else if b then y .." >> >>Theorem: for every program of type a there is program of type b that behaves >>exactly the same. > >I think this is equivalent to the following > >Theorem: For every program written in assembly language there is a program >written in any given turing-complete bytecode language that behaves exactly the >same. > >This is true of course from a mathematical point of view ;). > >Regards, >Janosch In other words: a program of type a is (translated) a machine language program. Every machine language problem is of type b. This proves the theorem. QED ;) You are right, that theorem is hot air. The question is perhaps: how to define the difference between a and b? The two types are different on some higher language level. Intuitively that seems obvious: a normal program (type b) doesn't change itself! However, it's not so easy to define (formally) what we mean by that. Martin
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