On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 11:17 AM, John Zabroski <[email protected]>wrote:
> > > On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 11:05 AM, Julian Leviston <[email protected]>wrote: > >> >> 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 >> >> > Wrong. > > Commercial spreadsheets are not Turing complete. However, it is possible > for a programming language built using the spreadsheet cell as a fundamental > building block to be Turing complete. See Oregon State University's work on > spreadsheet research. In particular, Margaret Barnett and Martin Erwig. > Margaret more focuses on computability issues, whereas Martin is more > focused on trustworthiness issues (he has been experimenting+prototyping a > type system for spreadsheets for about three years now). There was also an > MIT Master's CS student who proposed spreadsheets as a fundamental building > block for all multicore programming: Amir Hirsch. > http://fpgacomputing.blogspot.com/ > I meant Margeret Burnett - with a 'u' not an 'a' - the same person who worked with Adele Goldberg on visual object-oriented environments. Sorry for the typo.
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