Is Blockly Confirmed as Turing Complete?

[Amber Blaylock]

This is a weird question, but is basic Blockly (that is, including all of the out of the box Blockly blocks in a workspace) confirmed to be Turing complete? I'm fairly sure it is, as it can generate fairly complex arbitrary code, but I'm not sure how to actually prove it.

[Chris Johnson]

Amber Blaylock sent me the following 1.7K:

Usually this term is reserved for programming languages that are equivalent to a Turing machine, which is an early description of computing device based on a state machine. In practice, a language is Turing complete if it has memory, conditionals, and loops. Blockly has builtin blocks for all of these. But it is an interface to other languages and does not execute any of these itself. I don't think the term applies.

- Chris

[Andrew n marshall]

That's an excellent point, Chris. Blockly is not a language in itself.

That said, the builtin blocks have code generation support for all five supported (and turing-complete) languages, so the set of programs Blockly can generate in those languages with the built in blocks should also be turing complete.

There is a discussion on Stack Exchange about proving whether a language is turing complete.

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Andrew

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[Amber B]

Thank you both!