Why not allow empty code blocks?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Monday 25 July 2016 13:46, Rustom Mody wrote:

> The bald fact that tests are finite and the actual search space for cases for
> anything remotely non-trivial is infinite is undeniable.

I deny it :-P

"Infinity" is pretty big. It's *really* big. It's bigger than most people 
think. You might think your credit card bill last month was big, but infinity 
is much bigger.

Mathematicians deal with numbers which are so unfathomably huge that we can't 
even talk about them using the ordinary notation we use for ordinary numbers. 
Take something as unbelievably big as Graham's Number, so big they had to 
invent specialised notation just to discuss it:

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/GrahamsNumber.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTeJ64KD5cg

Let's make it bigger! Square it. No, cube it! Take the factorial! Cube it 
again! Raise that number to the power of itself! Add one!

Compared to infinity, this new number is infinitesimally tiny. Compared to 
infinity, this new number is barely even there. Compared to infinity, that new 
number might as well be zero.

Given that any actual program has to *exist* in order to be tested, it must be 
finite in size. Since the observable universe contains "merely" something of 
the order of 10**89 or so elementary particles (electrons, protons, etc) even 
with the combinatory explosion of possibilities, the upper bound on the number 
of test cases will be something like (10**89)**(10**89), which is minuscule 
compared to Graham's Number, let alone our even Vaster number. Which is so far 
short of infinity that in one sense we can say that it has barely even taken a 
single step in the direction of infinity.


(Of course I realise you were using "infinite" just as hyperbole. I just 
couldn't resist bringing Graham's Number into the discussion.)


-- 
Steve