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"Computer programs, like life itself, can be decomposed into two types of components:

Loops which repeat with small variations. Rube Goldberg like processes which happen once."

What in the? Any serious analysis could not possibly result from such guffaw-inducing oversimplifications.



Serious analysis can result from even more drastic simplifications.

An analysis only requires as much detail as is necessary for its purposes.

The same way that you don't go into registers when you try to teach functions, or binary representation of numbers if you teach people to use a calculator.


I thought its power was precisely in the extremeness of the simplification. It is interesting to think about types of software that don't fit this.




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