zlacker

It's not "the largest representable number" because you're not representing numbers in any rigorous sense. If I give you 64 bits, you can't tell me what number those bits represent (first, because the rules of the game are ambiguous - what if I give you 8 bytes that are a valid program in two different languages; and second, because even if you made the rules precise, you don't know which bitstrings correspond to programs that halt). And if I give you a number, you can't tell me which 64 bits represent that number or even if the number is representable, and that's true even for small numbers and even if I give you unbounded time.

It seems far more natural to say that you're representing programs rather than numbers. And you're asking, what is the largest finite output you can get from a program in today's programming languages that is 8 bytes or less. Which is also fun and interesting!

>>geoffs+(OP)
> If I give you 64 bits, you can't tell me what number those bits represent

You have to tell me the (non-cheating) programming language that the 64 bit program is written in as well.

> And you're asking, what is the largest finite output you can get from a program in today's programming languages that is 8 bytes or less.

That's what the post ends up saying, after first discussing conventional representations, and then explicitly widening the representations to programs in (non-cheating) languages.