It is likely that few features cause as much problems as pointers and references in statement-oriented languages, such as C, C++ and Java. They are powerful, yes, and they allow us to control quite precisely how a program is to represent something. We can use them to conveniently compose objects and data without the redundancy […]
Disclaimer: I haven’t checked academic sources for any of the statements made in this post – all of it is speculation which may be affirmed or rejected by existing literature. Existing computing hardware and software are based on a discrete model: the Church-Turing model. The machinery is built on digital logic, and formalisms such as […]
Last year I made some attempts at free association around formal languages and state machines. But at that time, not much was said about the idea of a state itself; an idea which I think holds a lot of interesting uncharted territory. To begin with, what is state really? Intuitively the word distinguishes states of […]
Today an oppressive, passivizing heat covers Tokyoites like a massive woollen blanket. Summer is here. In a feeble attempt to defy the heat, I follow up on my previous post on languages and automata. That post ended with the suggestion that we can apply these concepts to interactions in society. But can we? As a […]
Computing is very new as a science. Blaise Pascal devised a mechanical calculator in 1645, but Charles Babbage’s analytical engine, widely considered the first programmable computer, was not conceived of until the mid-19th century. However, it was never constructed (unlike Babbage’s simpler “difference engine”), and even at this time there was almost no theory to […]