Turing Tarpit
Turing Tarpit is the alternative form of Turing tarpit.
Noun capitalized: Turing tarpit
Turing tarpit (plural Turing tarpits)
- The situation in which a programming language is only minimally Turing complete, so that "everything is possible but nothing is easy".
- 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.1985, Jean-Paul Tremblay, Paul G Sorenson, The Theory and Practice of Compiler Writing
- Without more abstract notions of what constitutes important aspects of a programming language, one is seriously in danger of falling into the Turing Tarpit.1994, Jørgen Lindskov Knudsen, Object-oriented Environments: The Mjolner Approach
Forms of Turing Tarpit
| plural | Turing Tarpits |
|---|---|
| plural | Turing tarpits |
| alternative form | Turing Tarpit |
Origin of Turing Tarpit
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.
Questions about Turing Tarpit
- What does Turing Tarpit mean?
- Turing Tarpit means the situation in which a programming language is only minimally Turing complete, so that "everything is possible but nothing is easy".
- What is Turing Tarpit the alternative form of?
- Turing Tarpit is the alternative form of Turing tarpit.
- What part of speech is Turing Tarpit?
- Turing Tarpit is a noun.
- What is the plural of Turing Tarpit?
- The plural of Turing Tarpit is Turing Tarpits.
Words near Turing Tarpit in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: Turing Tarpit (page history and authors); Turing tarpit (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “Turing Tarpit.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/turing_tarpit. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.