3 ms·
What makes 'natural language' 'natural' is not really the appearance, it is what it is used for. A natural language is one used for communicating between humans
by hxa7241 16y ago
What makes 'natural language' 'natural' is not really the appearance, it is what it is used for. A natural language is one used for communicating between humans. It only works the way it does because of what is on the other end of it -- another person.
And that is why software must be different. Software must always be an 'un-natural language' because its (ultimate, essential) purpose is different: it is not communication but design. It works the way it does because it is for constructing an artifact.
If you want to build complex things, that is equivalent to saying you will have complex requirements. The complexity cannot be squeezed out, substantially, by changing language -- as Brooks said in 'No Silver Bullet', there is a hard core of essential complexity.
That purpose of design seems to mean an essential dichotomy of simplicity vs. control. If you want more simplicity you have to give up some control, and if you want more control you have to give up some simplicity.
One opportunity is that it seems likely true that we over-specify much of our software: we are using more control -- hence complexity -- than really needed. But the solution is not in changing language -- that would be the result. It is in figuring out what to do behind that -- AI figuring out what you want without you saying so. Maybe one day, in particular limited areas . . .
- beefman 16y agoI think we'll see human and machine languages get more alike in the future. We're already seeing a huge increase in the amount of nonfiction written and the level of literacy of the public. English spelling has become more standardized over the past couple centuries. We could say, humans must always communicate by grunting, because they are dumb animals. Or that speech recognition is impossible because machines lack a soul. Dykstra is brilliant, but he's also a curmudgeon who never likes anything.
- Waywocket 16y agoWhich boils down to: There's a reason that architects and engineers use schematics, rather than just writing instructions in prose.