[cap-talk] controversial article

[David-Sarah Hopwood]

Mark Miller wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 12:17 PM, David Wagner <daw at cs.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>> Matej Kosik  wrote:
>>> I hope that it is correct to say that all object-capability programming
>>> languages can be used for creating software systems that are defensively
>>> consistent but none of these languages (or platforms) can be used for
>>> creating defensively correct software systems. (?)
>>
>> To be pedantic, they can plausibly be used to build defensively
>> correct software systems (they're Turing-complete, after all); it's
>> more that those languages don't provide special support for reasoning
>> about or ensuring defensive correctness.  So those languages don't
>> provide any extra help; if you want defensive correctness, you're
>> on your own.
> 
> To be meta-hyper-turbo-pedantic, I claim this is false.

Indeed, and note that David's argument is incorrect because these languages
are *not*, strictly speaking, Turing-complete. A Universal Turing Machine
would have unlimited memory.

-- 
David-Sarah Hopwood  ⚥  http://davidsarah.livejournal.com