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You can program without loop and recursion and×÷- is all you need

github.com

#programming language#turing complete#fractran#arithmetic#loop free programming

9points
17comments
#2,855of 3,515 in 2024
Top 82%of 2024 by points

How HN took it

RoastedHalf or more of the comments are critical

0 positive, 0 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 7 critical, out of 7 comments about the project. Thread score -0.50.

Idea: 0 for, 7 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

Objections

  • Claimed Turing completeness is doubtful because the language has no runtime input and programs are static.

    From 2 comments
    • I think the issue here is that the language doesn't have any form of user input, so all possible programs are fully static and thus can be represented without any loops or…
      upon_drumhead on HN
    • I must just be missing something then. How would you write a program that prints out the numbers from 1 to n, for reasonable n? (representable by a computer)
      voidUpdate on HN
  • Unclear how to iterate or handle arbitrary inputs such as primality tests without loops.

    From 2 comments
    • How do you go back to an earlier point in the program if you can't loop? For example, how would you do a primality test for an arbitrary input?
      voidUpdate on HN
    • That's why I said an arbitrary number, you can't just precompute the primality of every single number... And I'm afraid I don't really understand your proof of being able to do…
      voidUpdate on HN
  • Precomputing outputs is impractical for large input spaces.

    From 2 comments
    • Don't need a language then, just compile down to "return 4". No instructions needed. Without user input it's not really useful. How about returning maximum value of user-privided…
      out_of_protocol on HN
    • The question isn't as to how it will be represented, that's the boring part. When given a number n, and you want to display them, how will you actually compute the numbers from 1…
      stoltzmann on HN

Questions

  • How would the program print numbers from 1 to n without loops?

    From 2 comments
    • I must just be missing something then. How would you write a program that prints out the numbers from 1 to n, for reasonable n? (representable by a computer)
      voidUpdate on HN
    • The question isn't as to how it will be represented, that's the boring part. When given a number n, and you want to display them, how will you actually compute the numbers from 1…
      stoltzmann on HN
  • How would a primality test work for an arbitrary input?

    From 1 comment
    • How do you go back to an earlier point in the program if you can't loop? For example, how would you do a primality test for an arbitrary input?
      voidUpdate on HN

Alternatives named

  • FRACTRAN, a Turing complete language based only on multiplication.

    From 1 comment
    • Why over complicate it? FRACTRAN is a Turning complete language based on only one operation: multiplication. It's Wikipedia entry gives a short FRACTRAN program that finds all…
      rstuart4133 on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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