Compute
You can compute in many ways. Turing and Church are prime examples
of this. You can apply code to data or data to code. You can specify
actions for an automaton to use. All you need is some functions and
a way to apply those functions and you can compute. Or you can have
two stacks and a transition function and then you can compute.
Can Z compute? I am not sure. Is it important? It might be. If
something is formal then it is unambigous and if something is
unambigous then it is possible to make a machine consummate the
described situation.
And why aren't we taught any of this at my university? These are
the cool things about Computer Science. Or at least some of the
cool things.
And just by the way. We should lose the Science in Computer science.
It should be simply Computing or Computer engineering. It is a sign
of immaturity in our beloved discipline that Software engineers and
computer scientist generally have the very same the degrees. This notion
that computing is an art should be rejected, stepped down on and
forgotten. Computing should be a craft, and engineering _discipline_.
There is no more room for art in computing than there is in any other
engineering discipine. Calling the discipline an art is just romanticising
the whole shebang and leads to us becoming emotionally attached to our
ideas of how things should be done.
Prime example:
Hardware = good.
Software = not so good.
Hardware = made by engineers in an engineering fashion.
Software = made by a guy performing with a keyboard.
Or we could just call it reckoning... I like that. That is what goes
on my curriculum vitae, "reckoning was the cynosure of my degree".
In my mind I see the past as a romantic place with huge harddisks
(which were quite small actually) and only real mode. This was cool,
this was were the real programmer were born, creeping out of the
primordial ooze displaying antics one can only dream of today.
The antics have turned into antiques now, to be remembered fondly,
but replaced by better tools with which my generation too can become
more emotionally attached to than we can become to a dog. And who said
software engineering attracted rational people?
I have made a decision. Or at least a decision to make a decision.
I think the future is cool, the future is a romantic place. Instead
of telling people how I had a hard disk weighing in at 20kg which could
store 1kbytes of data I'll tell them that I will carry a terabyte in my
pocket. I will tell them that I will be able to operate on more
states per clock cycle than all clock cycles since the beginning of
time have done combined. Then I'll tell them this is just my mobile
phone and ask them if they want to come over to my place to see my
desktop. "Oh, and do you want to see me interface with that blender
over there?"
Having a chip implanted in the mesencephalon might not tickle
everyones fancy but when the box says "guaranteed to boost
your mental capacities by 40%" I will be sold. To vain not to
get one of those.
Maybe I can write 40% more? Seeing as only the first 3 paragraphs were
part of the stratagem it might actually cause me to write 40% less.
