Quote:
Originally Posted by Larry Boy  Sorry if I come in at a late point in the discussion, but I would really appreciate if you could give a simple layman's explanation of this. |
Well, all a program ever does is a sequence of logical steps - determined by the program P - and generates some output.
Let's take a really simple P
x=inputNumber();
k=3;
while(k>0)
{
x=x*2;
k=k-1;
}
output(x);
Hopefully the meaning of this program is clear, and because of the loop, which goes round 3 times, it takes its input, multiplies it by 8 and outputs the result, so one theorem would be
5+P=>40
Because this is so simple, you don't need a computer to check it, but if P were very complicated, the computer would still be just regurgitating a result that was true anyway, and always will be.
Obviously, the computer could do something time-dependant - like incorporating the clock into its calculations, but surely that is just a trivial complication.
(Paul and I had this discussion some time ago, so the above discussion probably seemed a bit cryptic
)
David