From: Christian Szegedy <szegedy@...>
Date: 2002-09-08T05:12:08+09:00
Subject: Re: Larry Wall's comments on Ruby

Christian Szegedy wrote:
> Albert Wagner wrote:
> 
>> precludes the principles from applying to a complex program.  I 
>> suppose that there is either another "complexity theory" or the one 
>> that you pointed me to has been bastardized in the pop science community.
> 
> 
> I am a (discrete) mathematician. My brother happens to be a
> professor of complexity theory at the Rutgers University.
> The complexity theory, I pointed to, has its origin in the 1970-s.
> It started with the recognition of the clear distinction between the NP 
> and exponential complexity classes. It is a very serious and highly 
> fruitful branch of computer science. One could say that this is
> where the main focus of computer science lies. There is nothing 
> "bastardized" about it.
> 
>

Sorry, I've misinterpreted your sentence about
"bastardized in the pop science...".
Of course, you must be true...

Just to make an impression how important the computaion
complexity theory is: its main problem (P!=NP) leads
the list of seven most prestigious and important unsolved
mathematical problems. If you prove it, you get 1 million
bucks. In fact this conjecture is very fundamental: almost
all results in computational complexity theory is based on it,
still it is unproven. I don't know of any other part of
the mathematics which is based on an unproven conjecture.

http://www.claymath.org/prizeproblems/

Best regards, Christian