On 13/03/2010, at 3:17 AM, John Zabroski wrote:
> 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/
Okay, you're correct. Bravo. It's pretty irrelevant, though, and we seem to
have gotten sidetracked.
To restate my point, simply: programming computers is not as easy as using
them, and using them is not even as easy or useful as it could be.
Julian.
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