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> why not use natural language to specify a program, but add annotations to disambiguate the parts which are ambiguous due to the inherent fuzziness of natural
by phaedrus 16y ago
> why not use natural language to specify a program, but add annotations to disambiguate the parts which are ambiguous due to the inherent fuzziness of natural language?
That's far from a new idea; that misguided idea is how monstrosities like COBOL got inflicted on innocent programmers. Here's the problem: whatever you create, will not really be a natural language, it will just be another programming language. Yet for some reason everyone who has this idea thinks no one else ever thought of it. It's the computer science equivalent of perpetual motion physics cranks.
- stcredzero 16y agoHere's the problem: whatever you create, will not really be a natural language, it will just be another programming language. This is not what I was suggesting at all. I am thinking along the lines of Knuth's literate programming. What I'm proposing is a programming language combined with natural language, but instead of annotating a programming language with natural language annotations, I'm proposing doing it the other way around. There would still be two separate languages involved. You are talking about a single notation system with the qualities of both natural language and a programming language. Yes, that is a crank idea, which your mind seems to be stuck on.