alt Hacker NewsMaybe it's just me but the terminology used in "halting problem" didn't age well.
A lot of modern programs never terminate and thus to me "halting" means no longer able to compute, i.e it's hung/deadlocked.
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A lot of the language of computer science doesn't translate well to software development.
Computer Science historically being seen as a gateway to software development has done a large disservice to both fields.
> A lot of modern programs never terminate and thus to me "halting" means no longer able to compute, i.e it's hung/deadlocked.
The terminology of the "halting problem" is a very specific term of computer science, and it didn't age badly. This is like saying a reactor "going critical" hasn't aged well because non-physicists don't understand what "critical" means: it's not meant for them. Or about "prime numbers" because non-mathematicians don't know what "prime" means. Or what a "continuous function" is, etc, etc. You get the idea.
Modern programs are still composed of functions, and those functions are subject to the halting problem, in the sense that they get inputs and provide outputs. If they don't, they did not "compute" in precisely the sense you meant it. So let's say your videogame or whatever is waiting for input (the joystick or mouse) and you don't provide it, and because it's a turn-based game, nothing else happens. Has it "halted" in the sense we're discussing? Nope. It would be subject to halting if, once you provide input, the program cannot produce the intended result for your input (move a sprite, display "game over", start another round, play an animation, modify internal game state, etc).
In other words, Computer Science talks of "programs" but it's really any computation that takes an input and produces an output, and modern programs are made of them, so the problem applies to them.
Talking about the halting problem. Sometimes I come across a meme that asks this question:
If you choose an answer to this question at random what is the chance you will be correct?
A) 25% B) 50% C) 0% D) 25%
Maybe I'm wrong but I believe this problem and the halting problem are versions of Gödel's incompleteness theorem. In the realm of probability theory and computing science respectably. Basically, I see it as the inability of a set of rules to reason (or be applied) to themselves.