From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 109fba,baaf5f793d03d420 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,6154de2e240de72a X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: fc89c,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gidfc89c,public From: Craig Franck Subject: Re: What's the best language to start with? [was: Re: Should I learn C or Pascal?] Date: 1996/09/07 Message-ID: <50sj6q$aci@mtinsc01-mgt.ops.worldnet.att.net>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 179121169 references: <01bb8df1$2e19d420$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com> <4vcac4$gm6@zeus.orl.mmc.com> <01bb8f19$9a89d820$32ee6fce@timhome2> <841797763snz@genesis.demon.co.uk> <322f864d.42836625@news.demon.co.uk> <01bb9bf9$61e9e0e0$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com> content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii organization: AT&T WorldNet Services mime-version: 1.0 newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.unix.programmer,comp.lang.ada x-mailer: Mozilla 1.22ATT (Windows; U; 16bit) Date: 1996-09-07T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: "Tim Behrendsen" wrote: >Bob Cousins wrote in article ><322f864d.42836625@news.demon.co.uk>... >> Finally, you or may not consider that the human brain is a biological >> computer, and that does not appear to work by fetching instructions >> and executing them. So the very concept of instructions executing in >> sequence is an illusion created within our own non-digital, >> non-sequential, massively parallel active memory analog computer. > >The human brain works (as far as anyone knows) by electrical patterns >flowing through neurons. You have input from your senses which >stimulates pathways in your brain, and produces changes in the >memory structures, and possibly produces output through muscular >manipulations. Yes, but the *order* of the instructions might be an illusion. * () * earth star A star B Say star A is 50 light years from Earth and star B is 100 light years away. If A went super nova 50 years ago and B went super nova 100 years ago they appear to explode at the same time. Without advanced astronomical knowledge you would have no idea of the real order in which they exploded. If I run a program to sum a matrix of 100 numbers on a computer with multiple execution units and several concurrent tasks, I may have no clue in what order matrix was summed. Dependancies will be checked and one or more execution units may be available or not. The idea of a descrete number of steps occuring in a fixed order would be an illusion for some steps may occur simultaneously. >*There is no view other than the procedural view*. > >Everything comes down to data transformations over time. You >have yet to come up with an example where this is not true, and >you won't, simply because you can't eliminate the time axis. An >algorithm has to have a beginning and an end, an input and an >output, and in the middle is a black box known as the "procedure". In a sufficently complex vector unit, everything could literally happen at once. So what actually happened in the "black box" might never be acutally known, at least as far as the order in which things occured. You can of coarse enforce inorder execution. There can be "a set of ordered steps for solving a problem", but the order might be an illusion. That a computer is a "deterministic finite state machine" is true but you could simulate one with say, groups of human beings pretending to be registers and doing the logic funcions in there heads, even though people are not "finite state" or *perhaps* deterministic. In this case just when and how certain things occurred could be imposible to find out. I could lie and say that I did some of the logic when it was someone else. How could you even begin to model this as a state machine? Some of the behavour would truely be random. The time line would still be there but with no way to lay out the events the model loses it's straight "procedural" look and feel. What if I just randomly guessed at the value of a logic function? Is that procedural? How come one number popped into my head and not another? Also, since my debugger can run a program backwards your time line may have to be able to go in reverse. :-) -- Craig clfranck@worldnet.att.net Manchester, NH A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James