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Subject: Re: [TYPES] The type/object distinction and possible synthesis of OOP and imperative programming languages
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2013 10:25:42 +0200
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Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.python:43890

> The main thing that I notice is that there is a heavy "bias" in
> academia towards mathematical models.  I understand that Turing
> Machines, for example, were originally abstract computational concepts
> before there was an implementation in hardware, so I have some
> sympathies with that view, yet, should not the "Science" of "Computer
> Science" concern itself with how to map these abstract computational
> concepts into actual computational hardware?  

I prefer to think of Turing machines as an attempt to model existing
and imagined hardware (at the time, mostly human computers, or
groups of them with comparatively simple tools). See sections 1. 
and 9. in

    Turing, "On computable numbers, with an application to the 
    Entscheidungsproblem", 
    http://web.comlab.ox.ac.uk/oucl/research/areas/ieg/e-library/sources/tp2-ie.pdf

Modeling existing systems, in order to be able to reason about them,
is essential for science, as is translating models into experiments, in
order to compare predictions to reality.

Claus