Talk:Halting problem

message: The article states "This proof is significant to *practical computing efforts*, defining a class of applications which no programming invention can possibly perform perfectly." which does not make sense because all practical computing has to be performed with computers that have finite memory. 
Later the article correctly states "The halting problem is theoretically decidable for linear bounded automata (LBAs) or deterministic machines with finite memory." and all real computers are linear bounded in this sense. 
Of course, the technique to check for reoccurring memory patterns does not make the halting problem tractable, but Turing's theoretical result does, strictly speaking, not apply to "practical computing efforts". 
ClassA42 (talk) 13:40, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Misleading sentence?! 

message: This article use parenthetical references, which have been deprecated (WP:PAREN). I think converting the article to short footnotes (WP:SFN) is easiest, basically a simple find/replace of (...) with . Unless someone has a better idea? --Mathnerd314159 (talk) 17:50, 26 August 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Looking at the article more there are also regular references and even an Rp template (in the Lossy computation section). Short-term, "short footnotes + regular references" is the least work to convert to, but I also personally like the Rp template for being less work to use (all the info is in one place). --Mathnerd314159 (talk) 20:39, 26 August 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I hope you are not considering changing article text (not references) such as "Jack Copeland (2004) attributes...", which is in principle no different than text like the earlier "Alan Turing proved in 1936...". The deprecation of parenthetical referencing is only for actual references, not article text. I agree that text like "(Minsky 1967 p. 25)" or "(Hodges p. 83, Davis' commentary in Davis, 1965, p. 108)" is a parenthetical reference and should be converted to a footnote of some kind. Because we already have a "Notes" section for footnotes, and a "References" section expanding the references in the article, I agree that short footnotes are a logical choice. If you're doing this it would be helpful to also more consistently pull all full references to the references section instead of (as now) having some of them expanded within the footnotes, and to standardize on either Citation Style 1 or Citation Style 2 instead of (as now) mixing some of each. I don't think a mechanical find and replace is a good idea, though — you need to actually look at them and decide whether they are references or something else. Do not use rp. Rp is an abomination. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:18, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I did it. I did take out the date, so it reads "Copeland attributes ...". The 2004 isn't germane to the article - if Copeland had written in 2003 or 2005 it wouldn't matter. But 2004 is in the citation of course. And the dates are relevant in the history section, so those have dates mentioned, e.g. "a proof by Davis in 1958". It's still a bit messy but better IMO than before. --Mathnerd314159 (talk) 19:12, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Changing parenthetical referencing 

message: I don't know that i am writing correct or incorrect so sorry if there is any inconvenience with my further response .
Ad we all know here problem is about a software program that will run infinitely or it will terminate, according to me any program will run infinitely until unless we provide them enough storage and enough power energy to run. here we can take a ai robot as a refence because in this also anyhow we use program only and we know ai robots work until we don't destroy it or stop it to work. We can take example of an laptop that is developed and manufactured after that just keep it somewhere only after using once but the system , program any operation will work as it was working in using it first time. It will not terminate not terminate itself any how unless we didn't programed it to terminate. (The program which learn and update like an ai tool will never terminate it will run infinitely & the program which do not upgrade by itself will be terminated but it will also run for a long period of time). Deepesh150 (talk) 13:07, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Halting Problem: There's a mathematical concept called the Halting Problem, which proves there's no general way to know if any program will halt (finish) or run forever. However, this doesn't mean true infinite runs exist, just that predicting them is difficult.