Whoops

Someday I'll probably think about getting started

I'm at the point where my brain says "I don't want to do work", and my brain responds "alright then, let's not do any work". And then work doesn't get done, which I guess is going to be a problem. I blame the weather for my poor work ethic. I look outside and think to myself "it's too beautiful to do any work today" and then proceed to do nothing while staying inside.

Now that we've started to discuss the halting problem, many of my brain cells have died in an valiant attempt to help me understand what the flip is going on. I don't have a complete understanding of it, and I need some help clearing up a few ideas. Is the reason why navel_gaze(navel_gaze) halts if it doesn't halt (and vice versa) because of the while loop in navel_gaze?

def navel_gaze(f) :

    while H(f, f) : <- this part

        pass

    return 42 (hardy har, don't panic and all those pop culture references and whatnot)

I mean with the possibility of running into an infinite loop in the halt function and an infinite loop in navel_gaze, does the implementation of both ensure that the program will fall into one or the other and fail to run?  If not can the halt function actually run into a infinite loop? Along with questions about the basic halting problem, I have completely no idea how we are able to prove that an algorithm is non computable. It would be nice if we were taught the general formula and way of thinking for understanding and approaching these problems. If we went through a solution slowly that would help as well.

Also with the halting problem, consider the set of programmers that can create such an algorithm ({}). If you have the pleasure of being in the set, you can fly and are ridiculously handsome (and your name also begins with Danny H). Just stating the facts here people.

I'm definitely more optimistic about assignment 3 than I was for assignment 2. I understand the concept behind big o notation and have a good idea of how we can apply what we have learned previously in this course to help our proofs. I think I'm enjoying big o over mathematical proofs because it feels to me that big o is a little more systematic while the mathematical proofs required more creative thinking.