Turing Programming Language...

[tyger_claw]

Hey all,

Has anyone here besides me, used the obsolete programming language known as Turing? Instead of being thought the interesting and useful languages like C, Pascal, or VB, I was thought Turing.....

While doing a search, it seems that the software is/was Canadian, which might explain why I was learning it in school instead of the useful languages....

Just curious....

Those curious to what Turing is, how it works, and so, pm me...
I'll try to explain as best I can...

The Turing Website (www.holtsoft.com/turing)

[avdven]

I haven't worked with Turing specifically, but I have worked with similar languages during programming languages and advanced programming langauges. A lot of the psuedocode languages I had to use have similar syntax to Turing. I actually prefer SmallTalk for OOP if I can't use Java or C++. It's actually a pretty nice language.

AJ

[dspeidel]

I remember Turning Machines from a Automata, Computability and Languages (see http://www.cis.temple.edu/~poe/cis211.html for a description). I understood Turning to live prior to the development of languages as we know them today. He created the Turning machine to code break German encryption.

That's my 2 cents.
Cheers,
-D

[dspeidel]

I remember Turning Machines from a Automata, Computability and Languages (see http://www.cis.temple.edu/~poe/cis211.html for a description). I understood Turning to live prior to the development of languages as we know them today. He created the Turning machine to code break German encryption.

That's my 2 cents.
Cheers,
-D

[tyger_claw]

Cool, I did not know that.....

Once I get home, I'll upload the game I made through Turing....

Russian Roulette

(It's in DOS and it's Text Based... so don't get too excited, *if at all*)

[avdven]

I've worked with old Turing machines, such as those discussed by dspeidel. Alan Turing was made famous for the "Turing Test" in which a person would ask questions via a keyboard, and receive a response back on a display. The user would then have to decide whether the response was from a human or a computer. If he/she believed it to be a human, when, in fact, it was a computer, Turing suggested that the computer had obtained artificial intelligence. A basic version of this is in the elisa (alisa) program taught in my computer science/computer engineering courses, where you type in keywords, and it responds to those keywords by asking a sentence. It's basic natural language programming. I had to write one of these programs in LISP a few years ago, creating my own grammars, etc. It was absolutely brutal...

AJ

[Jabberwocky]

i'm with dspeidel, i've only heard of turning machines. big old mechanical devices, no hard drives, used tape for memories, very loud....

i know there was a sort of logic that it read the values off the tape into a queue and was therefore able to do a lot of the same functions you can do with assembly language today. i guess i should look into it more.

[avdven]

Here's a link to a site dedicated to Alan Turing (damn... check out the chronology... sucks how he died). Anyway... it discusses who he was, some of his inventions, ideas, etc. Hopefully you'll find it an interesting read.

http://www.turing.org.uk/turing/

AJ

[nevdull]

Turing! That's a blast from the past! In the late 80's I was in high school in Owen Sound, Ontario when they started
teaching Turing. I think it was of UofW or something. You're the first person I've seen who has ever heard of this! Wild!

[souleman]

avdven> How old are you? Have you worked with the actual old Turing machines, or are you talking about machines that were designed to pass a Turing Test?

I remember LISP. I actually dropped the class after the second week. I am not a great programmer as it is, and I wasn't about to try programming an AI. Although LISP is probably the best language for it.

And no, I have never used, or even heard of, the turing programming language.

[avdven]

Souleman - I'm 21. Although I'm still in the process of getting my degree, I consult for a number of small businesses and teach Computer Science courses at my university (they were short staffed, and I seem to have a real knack for programming and a strong teaching ability). I actually used one of the old Turing machines when I went with a few professors up to GMU last summer. They had a conference there, and I just tagged along, since the school said they'd pay for my ticket there. I didn't do anything substantial on it, but I got to play around a bit. It was a real hassle figuring out the whole "finite state" concept at the time, since it worked so differently then any other logic or math I had studied at that point (I have since taken two courses on finite math calculations and finite state machines so my understanding is much better now).

As for machines attempting to pass the Turing Test, the only one I've worked with was the program that I had to write in LISP. Beyond that, I haven't played with any other programs/machines.

AJ

[jethro]

/me laughs at all the old guys.

I've actually had a bit of experiance with LISP, as for a building a machine to pass the Turing Test.... does connecting to IRC and telling the people that they are talking to bots count?

[erikjacobsen]

Just my 3 cents:

1) Turing "invented" Turing machines to discuss and prove things about
computability: which functions can (and connot) be computed by any machine.
A Turing machine can't really be used for anything else.

2) Alan Turing worked with real computers during WWII to decipher German
cryptograms. "Real computers"??? Well, as good as they were then :)

3) The programming language Turing has just been named so in honor of Alan.

4) It really doesn't matter which language you use when you learn programming.
Remember the principles - and you can adapt them in most other languages.