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If you want to take this to its logical conclusion, then language is nothing but a fixed set of "alphabet", and a set of rules that generate infinite strings fr
by mahmud 16y ago
If you want to take this to its logical conclusion, then language is nothing but a fixed set of "alphabet", and a set of rules that generate infinite strings from this alphabet in some meaningful combination.
Alright, I will start: I am fluent in the language of traffic signs.
- bendmorris 16y agoThe confusion isn't coming from conceptual similarity, though. It's coming from the use of the word "language" which has multiple, distinct connotations. Traffic signs are never referred to as "language." Both spoken and programming languages are.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- barrkel 16y agoI'll bet that if you talk to designers and road layout experts, they'll freely talk about the "language of traffic signs". I'd also hazard a guess that people who are not programmers or familiar with how it all works would not refer to what we work with as a language, but as "code", "mathematics", "bits and bytes" etc.
- mahmud 16y agoThe numerical-analysis community refers to software as "codes" :-) I have recently seen a SIAM book that even had it in the title.