Linguist here. It's doesn't seem very similar to speaking another language at all. Hockett's Design Features is a set of features that is commonly used to disti

Linguist here. It's doesn't seem very similar to speaking another language at all. Hockett's Design Features is a set of features that is commonly used to distinguish natural human languages from other systems of communication: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett%27s_design_features https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett%27s_design_features Not that those features are requirements or anything, but they serve as a good guideline. As you can see, programming languages lack many of these features. For one, lack productivity — you can't suddenly switch up the syntax in some novel way or make up a new keyword to achieve some effect and expect the compiler/interpreter to just understand it. Programming is probably more akin to a jargon + some technical knowledge to go with it, but it's still a bad comparison because a jargon is still a part of a natural language — programming languages are not.