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by saagarjha 2687 days ago
So, solution to the halting problem: just kill anything that doesn't halt and return true?
1 comments

No. AWS Lambda allows up to 10s of processing before killing and returning a (killed, exceeded time) for the api call.

The Halting problem depends on a turing machine. As stated by Wikipedia, a turing machine is:

"a mathematical model of computation that defines an abstract machine, which manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules. Despite the model's simplicity, given any computer algorithm, a Turing machine capable of simulating that algorithm's logic can be constructed."

The first description how to build one is, "The machine operates on an infinite memory tape divided into discrete cells."

Infinite memory? Well, that's already trivial to dismiss then.

And I also said that things that need to be proved should be using finite state machines. Using an FSM means a dimensionality reduction to a thing that doesn't suffer from the halting problem. One can make complicated graphs, yet still not introduce the same pitfalls as a turing machine has.

And, here's a paper arguing that FSM's dont suffer from halting problem. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/025b/97d66265dfbcb02d9dd1a2...

This is why some scripting and configuration languages are now toying with the notion that "not Turing Complete" is a feature not a limitation of the system.

I'm kinda holding my breath that they turn out to be right.