Turing tar-pit
A place where anything is possible but nothing of interest is practical. Alan M. Turing helped lay the foundations of computer science by showing that all machines and languages capable of expressing a certain very primitive set of operations are logically equivalent in the kinds of computations they can carry out, and in principle have capabilities that differ only in speed from those of the most powerful and elegantly designed computers. However, no machine or language exactly matching Turing’s primitive set has ever been built (other than possibly as a classroom exercise), because it would be horribly slow and far too painful to use.
A “Turing tar-pit” is any computer language or other tool that shares this property. That is, it’s theoretically universal but in practice, the harder you struggle to get any real work done, the deeper its inadequacies suck you in. Compare bondage-and-discipline language.
A tar pit is a geological occurence where subterranean tar leaks to the surface, creating a large puddle (or pit) of tar. Animals wandering or falling in get stuck, being unable to extricate themselves from the tar. La Brea, California, has a museum built around the fossilized remains of mammals and birds found in such a tar pit.
[Jargon File]
(1998-06-27)
Read Also:
- Turing test
noun 1. a proposed test of a computer’s ability to think, requiring that the covert substitution of the computer for one of the participants in a keyboard and screen dialogue should be undetectable by the remaining human participant Turing test definition A test proposed by British mathematician Alan Turing, and often taken as a test […]
- Turion
noun, Botany. 1. a small shoot, as of asparagus or certain aquatic plants, from which a new plant can develop. noun 1. a perennating bud produced by many aquatic plants: it detaches from the parent plant and remains dormant until the following spring
- Turishcheva
noun 1. Ludmilla (lʊdˈmɪlə). born 1952, Soviet gymnast: world champion 1970, 1972 (at the Olympic Games), and 1974
- Turist
/too’rist/ Variant spelling of tourist. Possibly influenced by luser and “Turing”. [Jargon File]
- Turista
noun 1. tourista. noun 1. traveler’s diarrhea, especially as experienced by some visitors to Latin America. turista tu·ris·ta (tu-rē’stə) n. Diarrhea occurring in travelers as a result of a change in food and water. Not in technical use. turf, the