Could you support your claim that running times are irrelevant? I understand you want to keep your blog post (or "blarticle") short. But maybe you could elaborate here? I am genuinely interested in your argument.
I think there are other caveat of specifying only the results.
That post also contains a statement which I believe to be false. You state that the "Haltability problem" (where you are given a program P and want to determine if there exists an input on which it halts) is decidable but its not.
Basically, I can just hardcode any input I of my choosing into P so that it always does the same thing (run P on I) regardless of the actual input I' you provide it. Thus, I can use an algorithm for the Haltability problem to solve the halting problem.
I know that does not pertain to this post directly but the halting problem does. Given a program written in this new language, how can you determine if what the programmer specified can even exist as a program?
In fact, suppose you specify the properties of this new language you current wish to construct (in say, English and assume that everything is interpreted correctly). How do you know such a language could potentially exist (never mind implementing it)?
I also don't even want to think about debugging in such a language. More specifically, I would rather have a library for the example you described because if I make a mistake in my specification, I have ways to find the error in it. But I guess this goes back to my previous question: what does your compiler produce on an incorrect (or outright impossible) specification (i.e., piece of "code")?
Its certainly interesting to read about thoughts on potential new languages but I wish there were more solid theoretical foundations for posts like these. Otherwise, I feel that the same energy would be better spent on improving existing languages with some subset of the features you want.
I think there are other caveat of specifying only the results.
You posted earlier on the halting problem
http://evincarofautumn.blogspot.com/2011/10/solving-halting-...
That post also contains a statement which I believe to be false. You state that the "Haltability problem" (where you are given a program P and want to determine if there exists an input on which it halts) is decidable but its not.
Basically, I can just hardcode any input I of my choosing into P so that it always does the same thing (run P on I) regardless of the actual input I' you provide it. Thus, I can use an algorithm for the Haltability problem to solve the halting problem.
I know that does not pertain to this post directly but the halting problem does. Given a program written in this new language, how can you determine if what the programmer specified can even exist as a program?
In fact, suppose you specify the properties of this new language you current wish to construct (in say, English and assume that everything is interpreted correctly). How do you know such a language could potentially exist (never mind implementing it)?
I also don't even want to think about debugging in such a language. More specifically, I would rather have a library for the example you described because if I make a mistake in my specification, I have ways to find the error in it. But I guess this goes back to my previous question: what does your compiler produce on an incorrect (or outright impossible) specification (i.e., piece of "code")?
Its certainly interesting to read about thoughts on potential new languages but I wish there were more solid theoretical foundations for posts like these. Otherwise, I feel that the same energy would be better spent on improving existing languages with some subset of the features you want.