Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

24 May 2002, 7:28 a.m.

Computer scientists are always talking about the halting problem. Halting problem?…

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2002 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

Computer scientists are always talking about the halting problem. Halting problem? What halting problem? When I want to shut down my computer, I go to a prompt and type, "halt", and hit Enter. What's the problem?

Yes, I'm kidding.