turing tarpit
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
15
Scrabble Score
12
Letters
3
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The situation in which a programming language is only minimally Turing complete, so that "everything is possible but nothing is easy".
noun
Alternative form of Turing tarpit.
Example Sentences
- "The basic reason for increasing the size of the language is the so-called Turing tarpit: if the language is too simple, one may be able to do anything in it."
- "Without more abstract notions of what constitutes important aspects of a programming language, one is seriously in danger of falling into the Turing Tarpit."
Etymology
Coined by Alan Perlis (1922-1990), computer scientist, from the name of Alan Turing (1912-1954), who described a basis for all possible computational algorithms, and tarpit.