Encapsulation, inheritance and polymorphism

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Thu, 19 Jul 2012 13:50:36 -0500, Tim Chase wrote:

> On 07/19/12 13:28, Chris Angelico wrote:
>> On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 4:20 AM, Tim Chase
>> <python.list at tim.thechases.com> wrote:
>>> Sure it terminates...If you don't run out of RAM to represent the
>>> number "i" in question, there's also this "heat death of the universe"
>>> limit I keep hearing about ;-)
>> 
>> I'd be more worried about the heat death of your computer, it's likely
>> to be sooner. How many people have access to a computer that'll still
>> be running in ten years, much less a thousand?
> 
> Just putting a maximum bound on the problem, providing a time-frame in
> which I can be fairly certain that the program will have terminated. :-)

I'm reminded of Graham's Number, which is so large that there aren't 
enough molecules in the universe to write it out as a power tower 
a^b^c^d^..., or even in a tower of hyperpowers a^^b^^c^^d^^... It was the 
provable upper bound to a question to which experts in the field thought 
the most likely answer was ... six.

(The bounds have since been reduced: the lower bound is now 13, and the 
upper bound is *much* smaller than Graham's Number but still 
inconceivably ginormous.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham%27s_number



-- 
Steven