The Universal Mechanism of Computation
When we talk about computation, we can’t skip Alan Turing. He was the mind behind the concept that laid the groundwork for modern computers. The tool he imagined? The Turing Machine (TM)—simple in design, yet incredibly powerful in what it can do.
At its core, a Turing Machine has two main ingredients. First, there’s the tape, a strip of infinite length that holds symbols. Then, there’s the read/write head, which glides over the tape, reading symbols and writing new ones as it goes.
What makes Turing machines truly fascinating is that, despite their simplicity, they are equally powerful as today’s computers when it comes to computation. Studying them isn’t just an academic exercise—it’s a way to peek into the very limits and possibilities of what can be computed.