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Re: Low-level vs. High-level programming (was My First Computer)
- Subject: Re: Low-level vs. High-level programming (was My First Computer)
- From: "Kelly Hall" <hall@priest.com>
- Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 04:34:51 GMT
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"Randy McLaughlin" <randy@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:VUPJa.3368$QC5.2609@fe02.atl2.webusenet.com...
> It similar to the chicken and the egg problem but it's not. The Turing
> engine defines what is required to be a particular type of machine. That
is
> not related to what language it takes to program such a machine. The main
> definition it had on programming was that the program was stored (on tape
> originally vs. hard-wired contemporaries).
Two problems with what you say:
The concept of Turing machines dates from 1936, before the first digital
computers were built. They were proposed to explore the meaning of
computation, which is (to me) the heart of what one uses a 'computer
programming language' to do.
In a Turing machine, the tape does *not* store the program but only symbols
from an arbitrary set of symbols.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-machine/
A useful feature of Turing machines is that they are powerful enough to
describe themselves, leading to a Turing machine that can emulate another
Turing machine - nested Turing machine, analogous to a CPU ISA emulating a
second ISA (does P-code or JVM ring a bell?).
Kelly