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There is, perhaps surprisingly (or not), already a relevant XKCD mentioning this feature while poking fun at the computational abominations that were already po
by wgetch 5y ago
There is, perhaps surprisingly (or not), already a relevant XKCD mentioning this feature while poking fun at the computational abominations that were already possible in Excel:
https://xkcd.com/2453/ https://xkcd.com/2453/
On that note, TFA claims that the introduction of LAMBDA finally makes Excel Turing complete, unlike the kind of Turing machine simulators the stick figure is referring to in the XKCD comic...
> (In contrast, Felienne Hermans’s lovely blog post about writing a Turing machine in Excel doesn’t, strictly speaking, establish Turing completeness because it uses successive rows for successive states, so the number of steps is limited by the number of rows.)
- maest 5y agoTo be fair, no computer is an actual TM since memory is finite.
- quonn 5y agoIt can pause and ask you to temporarily attach another hard disk. Could be infinite as long as one can afford buying disks.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jaza 5y agoBut the amount of raw material on the planet needed for manufacturing more disks is finite. The amount of raw material in the universe is finite at a given point in time (it could be infinite over time, we don't know if time is infinite either). I think we've already established (especially over the past year) that fiat money is infinite. The Turing machine is a mathematical model. Infinity only exists in the world of mathematics. The physical world is by definition finite.
- gkop 5y ago> The physical world is by definition finite This isn't obvious to me, would you elaborate?
- anamexis 5y agoClassic HN: from article on new Microsoft Excel feature to semantic debate on the definition of the universe in record time.
- willhslade 5y agoTake everything in the world. Every physical piece. Break it into the smallest slice you care to: (atoms, quarks, whatever). The count of those things is bounded. It's a huge number, but it's finite. Infinity is not a real concept, it's imaging that there is no number that can be bounded.
- Dangeranger 5y agoMaybe, there are hypothesis’ that the Universe is infinite. The observable Universe is finite.
- bickeringyokel 5y agoIf the universe is infinite, Then the observable universe is only as finite as the length of your life and capability to traverse through space.
- Dangeranger 5y agoNot necessarily. The observable Universe could also be reducing over time. Distant galaxies are accelerating in their travel away from our observation position because space itself is expanding. This means that over long periods of time, objects at the periphery of the observable Universe will red shift out of view.
- sullyj3 5y agoThis demonstrate countability, not finiteness. If by "world" you mean universe, there's no guarantee that you can "take everything in it", because it might be infinite.
- IIAOPSW 5y agoA paper clip machine scenario but instead it wants to turn all atoms into hard drives so it can keep running itself. A machine who's purpose is itself. A stupid orobus that will kill us all.
- aidenn0 5y agoRight, all computers have a bounded amount of state, so they can only parse regular languages.