this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2024
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Programming

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Why focus on formal language in theory of computation? Most programs do more than merely accept or reject an input (lemy.lol)
submitted 8 months ago by matcha_addict@lemy.lol to c/programming@programming.dev
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While reading Sipser's book on theory of computation, it relies heavily on the concept of formal language, and machines that merely accept or reject an input.

But most useful programs we deal with do more than merely verify an input. They compute something. We may compute a solution for an equation instead of merely verify it. We may sum a list of numbers, or calculate some function on it.

Maybe "most" is an exaggeration since I can't prove it. But still, it begs the question. Why not deal with machines than do more than merely verify?

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[–] solrize@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

Language recognition is a useful framework for complexity theory. There are also "counting problems" and complexity classes for them, like #P:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%99%AFP

If you're looking at numerical calculations from a theoretical standpoint, there is a variant of Turing machines for that, with a lot of really nice results:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blum%E2%80%93Shub%E2%80%93Smale_machine