Run length finiteness will kick in long before program size finiteness. How long do you expect to have to run before you hit 100 heads in a row by flipping fair coins a trillion times a second?
Roughly speaking, we’re talking multiples of the age of the universe so far.
Whenever you’re thinking that a 64-bit state might not be enough for something counter-like, it’s a good thing to think about time. I remember thinking once for more than half a minute how to handle overflow of a 64-bit variable. It was used to pass the number of files extracted from an archive. On an iPad.
Run length finiteness will kick in long before program size finiteness. How long do you expect to have to run before you hit 100 heads in a row by flipping fair coins a trillion times a second?
Roughly speaking, we’re talking multiples of the age of the universe so far.
An excellent point. I didn’t even think of time.
Whenever you’re thinking that a 64-bit state might not be enough for something counter-like, it’s a good thing to think about time. I remember thinking once for more than half a minute how to handle overflow of a 64-bit variable. It was used to pass the number of files extracted from an archive. On an iPad.