3 ms·

Natural language has ambiguity. That kills its effectiveness as a programming language.

by coderdude 16y ago

varjag 16y ago
It would be interesting to see how many Haskell programmers are also Lojban speakers.
- Wilfred 16y ago
  Funny you should mention that. There was a survey of favoured web frameworks[1] in the Lojban community, and Haskell with snap won[2]. 1: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/T6B69LK http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/T6B69LK 2: http://teddyb.org/~rlpowell/public_media/lojban_survey.PNG http://teddyb.org/~rlpowell/public_media/lojban_survey.PNG
jaekwon 16y ago
Solvable if the compiler can initiate an intelligent conversation. Like, "What you said is ambiguous. Did you mean? ..."
- dexen 16y ago
  Do you envision search engines becoming Turing complete at some point in time? ;-)
  - jaekwon 16y ago
    I don't know why you ask that. Are you suggesting that it is difficult to determine whether a statement is ambiguous or not?
    - dexen 16y ago
      It was half-joke, actually -- but there is point to it, to some extent. I was referring to the fact that (web) search engines often display `Did you mean X?' when query string contains a symbol they don't know. Also, in a way, a search engine does interpret the query as a (simplistic) program of sorts. And, once in a while, it'd be handy to be able to issue query to search engines in a more powerful query language... So I saw a weak analogy there, between search engine and a compiler with the `Did you mean X?' feature.
      - Swannie 16y ago
        You appear to be confusing "Turing complete" and the "Turing test". These two concepts are only related by the man which proposed them. They are quite separate classes of concept.
- kleiba 16y ago
  That would be awesome! Perhaps we could have an animated character have that conversation with us... how about an intelligent paperclip or something?! Wouldn't programming become so cool!?!!
  - jaekwon 16y ago
    I hope in 20 years we look back and say 'duh, of course'. And yeah, it would be so cool.
    - thesz 16y ago
      I feel like I should introduce you to Agda2: http://wiki.portal.chalmers.se/agda/pmwiki.php http://wiki.portal.chalmers.se/agda/pmwiki.php You write something, Agda2 checks it and says that you forget something, you wrote an inconsistent code or you wrote ambiguous code (it is possible to hide some parts of code).

Natural language has ambiguity. That kills its effectiveness as a programming language.

varjag 16y ago

It would be interesting to see how many Haskell programmers are also Lojban speakers.

Wilfred 16y ago
Funny you should mention that. There was a survey of favoured web frameworks[1] in the Lojban community, and Haskell with snap won[2]. 1: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/T6B69LK http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/T6B69LK 2: http://teddyb.org/~rlpowell/public_media/lojban_survey.PNG http://teddyb.org/~rlpowell/public_media/lojban_survey.PNG

jaekwon 16y ago

Solvable if the compiler can initiate an intelligent conversation. Like, "What you said is ambiguous. Did you mean? ..."

dexen 16y ago
Do you envision search engines becoming Turing complete at some point in time? ;-)
- jaekwon 16y ago
  I don't know why you ask that. Are you suggesting that it is difficult to determine whether a statement is ambiguous or not?
  - dexen 16y ago
    It was half-joke, actually -- but there is point to it, to some extent. I was referring to the fact that (web) search engines often display `Did you mean X?' when query string contains a symbol they don't know. Also, in a way, a search engine does interpret the query as a (simplistic) program of sorts. And, once in a while, it'd be handy to be able to issue query to search engines in a more powerful query language... So I saw a weak analogy there, between search engine and a compiler with the `Did you mean X?' feature.
    - Swannie 16y ago
      You appear to be confusing "Turing complete" and the "Turing test". These two concepts are only related by the man which proposed them. They are quite separate classes of concept.
kleiba 16y ago
That would be awesome! Perhaps we could have an animated character have that conversation with us... how about an intelligent paperclip or something?! Wouldn't programming become so cool!?!!
- jaekwon 16y ago
  I hope in 20 years we look back and say 'duh, of course'. And yeah, it would be so cool.
  - thesz 16y ago
    I feel like I should introduce you to Agda2: http://wiki.portal.chalmers.se/agda/pmwiki.php http://wiki.portal.chalmers.se/agda/pmwiki.php You write something, Agda2 checks it and says that you forget something, you wrote an inconsistent code or you wrote ambiguous code (it is possible to hide some parts of code).