Once you have a computer that can do a few things - strictly speaking, one that has a certain 'sufficient set' of basic procedures - it can do basically anything any other computer can do. This, loosely, is the basis of the great principle of 'Universality'.

It's the way I study - to understand something by trying to work it out or, in other words, to understand something by creating it. Not creating it one hundred percent, of course; but taking a hint as to which direction to go but not remembering the details. These you work out for yourself.

Perhaps one day we will have machines that can cope with approximate task descriptions, but in the meantime, we have to be very prissy about how we tell computers to do things.

Richard P. Feynman Quotes