On 13/03/2010, at 2:45 AM, Dethe Elza wrote:

> Other have made the argument that Google is essentially the modern 
> command-line interface, but I think this goes way beyond Google. Things like 
> mash-ups are made possible by the View Source nature of the web, every web 
> page becomes an API. The ubiquity of Javascript is what makes it powerful, 
> not so much the actual syntax of Javascript (although I will go on record 
> that I *like* Javascript).
> 
> And back to Andrey's example that Julian was responding to. We can write 
> bookmarklets or GreaseMonkey scripts, or browser plugins that change every 
> aspect of GMail. We can use GMail to make general Google Queries. We can 
> embed spreadsheets and other executable code into GMail messages. How much 
> goal direction and configuration is needed to become "a program?"

I disagree with this.

The difference seems fairly clear and obvious to me. A programming language 
must be turing complete... spreadsheets are not turing complete because they 
don't do program execution flow... looping and the like...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_completeness

Julian.
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