Exactly. The only 'natural language' exercise I can think of that compares with programming is the drafting of legal documents, which also aim to specify someth

Exactly. The only 'natural language' exercise I can think of that compares with programming is the drafting of legal documents, which also aim to specify something precisely according to a very particular set of definitions. Unsurprisingly, legal documents have a reputation for being at least as difficult to read as some code. Natural language, designed for human communication, is, by its nature, unsuitable for precise definition, and a precise language is also unsuitable for human communication. It really makes sense once you realize how much conversation and prose depend on puns, allegory, allusion, symbols, context, emotion, and so on. All of which are hostile to stating a thing as exactly as possible.