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Inform 7 is a programming language that looks similar to natural English. As far as I can tell the only benefit is tricking beginners into thinking it's easy. B
by mrob 10y ago
Inform 7 is a programming language that looks similar to natural English. As far as I can tell the only benefit is tricking beginners into thinking it's easy. By the time they figure out it's a normal programming language only with extra verbose syntax, it's too late, they're already a programmer.
If we had a real natural language based programming language it would have all the problems of law. Laws are written in a very formal style that takes a lot of training to understand, and despite this they contain enough ambiguity to support a whole industry of lawyers arguing about them. Making programming similar to law would not make anything easier.
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoFor a previous attempt at the same idea, see COBOL. The original design goal was to make professional programming obsolete.
- ktRolster 10y agoApplescript is worth looking at for the same reasons.
- douche 10y agoI used to mess around a bit with Inform 6 (they had a really excellent tutorial[1]). It wasn't great, but since it was basically C-like with some extra DSL stuff sprinkled on top, you could usually figure out what it was doing without too much effort. I tried to get into Inform 7, but the natural language syntax was so fuzzy, I was constantly trying to figure out how things worked and how I had to write things down to get the results I was trying to get. EDIT: Since guess-the-verb was sometimes half the battle with old Infocom games, I suppose its ironically fitting that the experience of writing IF with Inform 7 parallels that experience. [1] http://inform-fiction.org/manual/about_ibg.html http://inform-fiction.org/manual/about_ibg.html