Comment by rebane2001
4 days ago
I wasn't sure whether to address the disconnect in the FAQ - I wanted it to be short and readable.
The idea is that, since a long time ago, there has always been demos that prove turing completeness and other programmy qualities in CSS, but that which people dismiss as requiring user inputs. The ones around by the time the comment got made were definitely at the "keep on clicking on the same spot on the screen" level - essentially just providing a clock.
And seeing discussion from after Jane Ori's hack, many still claim that even as much as hovering your mouse on a specific part of the screen makes css not a programming language.
> essentially just providing a clock
"providing a clock" is not something to dismiss though. Arithmetic plus looping will give you a Turing machine, so you do need both or you're just showing the ability to do arithmetic.
And a proper Turing machine doesn't need an extra line of template html for each iteration. It's much easier to forgive finite memory, since a small amount of memory can go for billions of years while an iteration limit runs out fast.
This one passes all the bars, but I do think the bars were overall legitimate.
> many still claim that even as much as hovering your mouse on a specific part of the screen makes css not a programming language.
That bar is pretty silly.
clock != looping, those examples already loop (dont need a line per iteration), but just dont have a built-in clock
and requiring a clock is imo dismissable, because pretty much all modern technology needs a clock too (either from the power grid, or from a hardware component designed for it)
Sure, we can separate loops from clocking for the most part. But it doesn't really change the analysis. These loop. The stuff from several years ago didn't loop properly.
As a tangent though, the system is already powered, you shouldn't need a secondary power source to make your Turing machine go. Something there still feels incomplete, like it probably passes but with an asterisk. But that distinction doesn't matter for CSS since it can self-clock.