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.