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Love this, and agree. Though I would love to see a computer system which can resolve ambiguity in natural languages and formalize it for us. It would get it wro

Love this, and agree. Though I would love to see a computer system which can resolve ambiguity in natural languages and formalize it for us. It would get it wrong often, but if it is good at it, no more so then a programmer gets the requirements wrong.

Jtsummers 9y ago
We may not be able to do this automatically, but you can use a kind of refinement calculus to accomplish this. Start off with vague requirements from your client: We need a machine which can wash clothes at various temperatures and speeds. The user should have options to control the temperature and speed since they'll have different types of materials. Maybe we can give them some preset options? Conversation: What are the temperature options? Hot, warm and cold; but it's in two cycles and each can have a different temperature. How long should it wash the clothes for? That depends on the material and how dirty it is. What if it's really dirty? They should be able to do an extra rinse cycle. How fast should it spin? That depends on the material and how dirty it is. Refined (control panel only): Dial presenting options for: Sanitary Normal Sensitive Bulky Buttons allowing further refinement: Water: Hot/Cold, Warm/Warm, Warm/Cold, Cold/Cold Extra Rinse: (yes or no) "Dirtiness": light, normal, heavy (impacts wash duration) If you use a proper requirements management tool, you can trace every one of those final system requirements back to some (slightly editorialized) conversation or initial (ambiguous, plain language) requirement description. Of course, this will, in reality, be an iterative process as you discover ambiguities in the specification and code and go back to the client for feedback and clarification.
another-dave 9y ago
You could potentially have a compiler that would infer meaning & only fail compilation if the fuzzy natural language terms were ambiguous in context — just like languages like Scala currently infer types when unambiguous. Also, feels like Inform7 should be mentioned in any discussion on NLP and programming: http://inform7.com http://inform7.com First thing to mind based on the article's premise and hits a lot of the article's desired points already.
- didibus 9y ago
  Interesting. This feels like a great way to prototype functional requirements. Express the full process as an interactive fiction novel, and let people play it. Get feedback, iterate on the novel, until they are satisfied, then implement.
- slaymaker1907 9y ago
  One thing that would be interesting is if you could write a compiler front end that was interactive so that it could give you better error messages.

Jtsummers 9y ago

We may not be able to do this automatically, but you can use a kind of refinement calculus to accomplish this. Start off with vague requirements from your client: We need a machine which can wash clothes at various temperatures and speeds. The user should have options to control the temperature and speed since they'll have different types of materials. Maybe we can give them some preset options? Conversation: What are the temperature options? Hot, warm and cold; but it's in two cycles and each can have a different temperature. How long should it wash the clothes for? That depends on the material and how dirty it is. What if it's really dirty? They should be able to do an extra rinse cycle. How fast should it spin? That depends on the material and how dirty it is. Refined (control panel only): Dial presenting options for: Sanitary Normal Sensitive Bulky Buttons allowing further refinement: Water: Hot/Cold, Warm/Warm, Warm/Cold, Cold/Cold Extra Rinse: (yes or no) "Dirtiness": light, normal, heavy (impacts wash duration) If you use a proper requirements management tool, you can trace every one of those final system requirements back to some (slightly editorialized) conversation or initial (ambiguous, plain language) requirement description. Of course, this will, in reality, be an iterative process as you discover ambiguities in the specification and code and go back to the client for feedback and clarification.

another-dave 9y ago

You could potentially have a compiler that would infer meaning & only fail compilation if the fuzzy natural language terms were ambiguous in context — just like languages like Scala currently infer types when unambiguous. Also, feels like Inform7 should be mentioned in any discussion on NLP and programming: http://inform7.com http://inform7.com First thing to mind based on the article's premise and hits a lot of the article's desired points already.

didibus 9y ago
Interesting. This feels like a great way to prototype functional requirements. Express the full process as an interactive fiction novel, and let people play it. Get feedback, iterate on the novel, until they are satisfied, then implement.
slaymaker1907 9y ago
One thing that would be interesting is if you could write a compiler front end that was interactive so that it could give you better error messages.