6 ms·

This is an illusion that was fed early on by people working on programming. The reality is that programming languages are languages, but only for a very restric

This is an illusion that was fed early on by people working on programming. The reality is that programming languages are languages, but only for a very restricted vocabulary that is not even close to what can be done on human languages. Also, being fluent in a human language involves not only reading and writing, but also talking, which as you pointed out is a considerably more complex skill.

leetcrew 7y ago
> Also, being fluent in a human language involves not only reading and writing, but also talking, which as you pointed out is a considerably more complex skill. I would push back slightly on this. I don't consider the ability to have a conversation in french to be a greater achievement than reading (and understanding) a latin text.
- filleduchaos 7y ago
  Are you bilingual?
  - leetcrew 7y ago
    I wouldn't call myself bilingual, but I speak enough spanish to make myself understood by people who don't know any english. can you read latin?
    - filleduchaos 7y ago
      "Enough Spanish to make myself understood" doesn't really tell me much. There is a huge gap in command of a language between "I can order food or ask for directions on the street" and "I can drop into a conversation about today's news, no problem", and a huge gap in fluency between "My grammar/diction/pronunciation are incorrect but people can strain themselves to figure out what I mean" and "My speech is accented but clearly intelligible". The greater point is that reading and writing are actually both easier and simpler than listening and speaking[0], even though we tend to learn how to do the former after the latter; think of the difference in difficulty between building software that can process natural language from text vs. from speech, and realise that many of the same additional problems (such as the sheer ambiguity of sound versus letters and the ephemerality of real-time speech) apply to human brains as well as to software systems. In fact, as you develop beyond infancy, the ability of your brain to distinguish sounds that are not a part of your native language(s) rapidly atrophies in favour of optimising for the ones you heard on a daily basis as a baby[1]. > can you read latin? No, because I have next to zero interest in it. I am however familiar enough with [Ecclesiastical] Latin to recognise that it is largely overhyped in "difficulty" by monolingual English speakers for whom it is their first tangle with extensive conjugations and declensions - it's not much harder or more complex than the Romance languages it birthed[2], and is significantly less so than, say, modern Arabic or many of the Slavic languages. 0. Additionally reading and listening are relatively easier than writing and speaking respectively, due to the brain ingesting information more readily than it produces it. 1. There are about 800 distinct sounds used in all human speech, but the average language only uses ~40. By the time you're a year old, you've neurally committed to whatever handful of those sounds those around you have been making; you become hard-pressed indeed to even hear the difference between the remaining ~760 and the ones you already know. As a concrete example I've had personal experience with, in Hausa the sound written as `f` isn't pronounced labiodentally (upper teeth to bottom lip, the way it is in English) but rather bilabially (lips close together, not quite touching, and air forced between them at varying speeds depending on the word). People whose languages don't have that sound almost invariably interpret that sound as a `p`, an English `f`, or even an `h`. 2. As something of an aside, French is my third language (having been exposed to it since I was three or four years old) and I can attest to how much more difficult it is to speak/listen to it than to read it.
- Pmop 7y ago
  I had my first conversation in English recently, despise having been reading books and texting people using this language for a while; and yet, managed to express my ideas just fine. English pronunciation is a bit harder though, as what is written is oftentimes different from what is spoken, and you risk running in circles trying to find the correct pronunciation. My native language has a phonemic writing system.
- take_a_breath 7y ago
  ==I don't consider the ability to have a conversation in french to be a greater achievement than reading (and understanding) a latin text.== Computers have a much easier time translating text than they do holding conversations. That might be an indication that one is more complex than the other.
  - leetcrew 7y ago
    translating is not the same as reading and understanding. out of curiosity, I plugged catullus 16 into google translate. it did a decent job, but not much better than looking up each word one-by-one in a latin dictionary and picking the first english meaning.
  - imtringued 7y ago
    Translation is far harder than holding conversations. It means that you must be fully aware of tiny cultural differences in the languages. Just because two words have the same dictionary definition doesn't mean they actually are equivalent. However, the quality of translation usually doesn't matter as much as the quality of a conversation precisely because a human wrote the original text and the recipient knows the target language and culture. >That might be an indication that one is more complex than the other. It just means that most of the work is done by the humans.
    - take_a_breath 7y ago
      You have to do the same thing when speaking. The addition of body language and tone, which text doesn’t have, make it more complex. If it was easier for computers to do it, they would. That humans do the work is further evidence it is more complex.
K0SM0S 7y ago
I totally agree. I find that the appeal of programming languages, their strength, fades away in the face of pure mathematics anyway. There's nothing like the full complement of a formal language, symbols, abstractions and all, one that you can write and read just as fluently as English. As for human languages, being bilingual myself (acquired over 30ish years (am 37), not innate), I can only testify that this is as close to having "two different minds" as it gets— the sheer experience of life is different depending on which language you think it in, you speak it or write it to others. That's as close as I can get experientially (qualia) to the notion that language is culture, civilization, thus psychological mindset (both individual and collective). It's a very weird experience of life to have this ability to switch between modes. Doesn't make you any smarter I guess, but certainly opens one's horizons, helps thinking 'out of the box' (i.e. perspective), reach more balanced views perhaps. I'd like to write a short piece about that someday. Hopefully later if #19 hasn't disposed of me by then. Note that there is little to no overlap with programming languages or math. You can think these domains in any human language, the translation in symbols/code remains identical, ideally (that's formalism to me, requiring mathematical rigor, not literature skills). As such, it is interesting and enriching to learn both— several human languages, and math (or at least one programming language). You gain things from each that do not exist in the other subset no matter how deep you look.
- xkapastel 7y ago
  > I find that the appeal of programming languages, their strength, fades away in the face of pure mathematics anyway. The appeal and strength of a programming language is its ability to be executed, something that pure mathematics does not and cannot ever have.
  - martin__ 7y ago
    You might want to look into something called Constructivism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_proof https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_proof
- imtringued 7y ago
  >I totally agree. I find that the appeal of programming languages, their strength, fades away in the face of pure mathematics anyway. Then you haven't learned anything. Even pure mathematics is still expressed in arbitrary notation. It's no different than a programming language in that regard.
naasking 7y ago
> The reality is that programming languages are languages, but only for a very restricted vocabulary that is not even close to what can be done on human languages. Vocabulary is not the real difference. A word is an abstract concept given a definition in terms of other words. The equivalent of set of related words is an API in a programming language. The real difference is that natural languages are intended and optimized for speaking, and they inherently encourage ambiguity because conversation is an interactive process where one can request clarification. Programming languages are typically non-interactive and don't tolerate ambiguity at all.
- hutzlibu 7y ago
  "Vocabulary is not the real difference. " It also is. Because in a programming language every vocable is clearly defined when used, or you get an error. Words in natural languages are not really clearly defined. There is only a very small subset of words, people are not fighting over their definition. Thats why it is an art, to write a understandable book. Or give a lecture, the audience can understand. But you are right, languages are optimized for being spoken in 2 ways. With the possibilitie of clarification.
  - imoverclocked 7y ago
    Clearly, you have never read the C spec.
    - hutzlibu 7y ago
      No I did not. But in the end, when it gets compiled, every word is clearly defined, or not?
      - grawprog 7y ago
        >C11(ISO/IEC 9899:201x) §3.4.3 >1 undefined behavior >behavior, upon use of a non portable or erroneous program construct or of erroneous data, for which this International Standard imposes no requirements >2 NOTE Possible undefined behavior ranges from ignoring the situation completely with unpredictable results, to behaving during translation or program execution in a documented manner characteristic of the environment (with or without the issuance of a diagnostic message), to terminating a translation or execution (with the issuance of a diagnostic message). >3 EXAMPLE An example of undefined behavior is the behavior on integer overflow.
godelski 7y ago
To add to this, there are extremely limiting languages like Toki Pona[0]. To construct complex ideas it relies heavily on combining words. But that's also a characteristic we see in most languages, especially in German and Chinese. The only difference I see is that we don't speak C++ (though you could argue that sometimes we do). Mostly because it is pretty laborious and not worth the effort when we have a common tongue (pun intended) between us. Spoken languages were created to communicate. They advanced to allow us to convey complex and highly abstract ideas. I wouldn't say programming languages were constructed with the same intent (at least they are intended to be interpreted by a computer, not by a human). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona
- pgt 7y ago
  I wonder what a Toki Pona for computer programming would look like.
  - godelski 7y ago
    I mean... binary and assembly are things...
- imtringued 7y ago
  I always wonder why anyone would bother with pictograms for a new language. The Latin alphabet is just a bunch of strokes that can be trivially written in cursive. When you consider all the awful writing systems that exist around the world the Latin alphabet appears to be near perfect. Toki Pona is just adding one entry on the list of languages with awful writing systems.
  - godelski 7y ago
    Chinese is pretty efficient as a language. I think there are things that are more obvious in traditional though. There are advantages and disadvantages to each. But beware self bias because you (I'm assuming) grew up with an alphabet based language.

leetcrew 7y ago

> Also, being fluent in a human language involves not only reading and writing, but also talking, which as you pointed out is a considerably more complex skill. I would push back slightly on this. I don't consider the ability to have a conversation in french to be a greater achievement than reading (and understanding) a latin text.

filleduchaos 7y ago
Are you bilingual?
- leetcrew 7y ago
  I wouldn't call myself bilingual, but I speak enough spanish to make myself understood by people who don't know any english. can you read latin?
  - filleduchaos 7y ago
    "Enough Spanish to make myself understood" doesn't really tell me much. There is a huge gap in command of a language between "I can order food or ask for directions on the street" and "I can drop into a conversation about today's news, no problem", and a huge gap in fluency between "My grammar/diction/pronunciation are incorrect but people can strain themselves to figure out what I mean" and "My speech is accented but clearly intelligible". The greater point is that reading and writing are actually both easier and simpler than listening and speaking[0], even though we tend to learn how to do the former after the latter; think of the difference in difficulty between building software that can process natural language from text vs. from speech, and realise that many of the same additional problems (such as the sheer ambiguity of sound versus letters and the ephemerality of real-time speech) apply to human brains as well as to software systems. In fact, as you develop beyond infancy, the ability of your brain to distinguish sounds that are not a part of your native language(s) rapidly atrophies in favour of optimising for the ones you heard on a daily basis as a baby[1]. > can you read latin? No, because I have next to zero interest in it. I am however familiar enough with [Ecclesiastical] Latin to recognise that it is largely overhyped in "difficulty" by monolingual English speakers for whom it is their first tangle with extensive conjugations and declensions - it's not much harder or more complex than the Romance languages it birthed[2], and is significantly less so than, say, modern Arabic or many of the Slavic languages. 0. Additionally reading and listening are relatively easier than writing and speaking respectively, due to the brain ingesting information more readily than it produces it. 1. There are about 800 distinct sounds used in all human speech, but the average language only uses ~40. By the time you're a year old, you've neurally committed to whatever handful of those sounds those around you have been making; you become hard-pressed indeed to even hear the difference between the remaining ~760 and the ones you already know. As a concrete example I've had personal experience with, in Hausa the sound written as `f` isn't pronounced labiodentally (upper teeth to bottom lip, the way it is in English) but rather bilabially (lips close together, not quite touching, and air forced between them at varying speeds depending on the word). People whose languages don't have that sound almost invariably interpret that sound as a `p`, an English `f`, or even an `h`. 2. As something of an aside, French is my third language (having been exposed to it since I was three or four years old) and I can attest to how much more difficult it is to speak/listen to it than to read it.
Pmop 7y ago
I had my first conversation in English recently, despise having been reading books and texting people using this language for a while; and yet, managed to express my ideas just fine. English pronunciation is a bit harder though, as what is written is oftentimes different from what is spoken, and you risk running in circles trying to find the correct pronunciation. My native language has a phonemic writing system.
take_a_breath 7y ago
==I don't consider the ability to have a conversation in french to be a greater achievement than reading (and understanding) a latin text.== Computers have a much easier time translating text than they do holding conversations. That might be an indication that one is more complex than the other.
- leetcrew 7y ago
  translating is not the same as reading and understanding. out of curiosity, I plugged catullus 16 into google translate. it did a decent job, but not much better than looking up each word one-by-one in a latin dictionary and picking the first english meaning.
- imtringued 7y ago
  Translation is far harder than holding conversations. It means that you must be fully aware of tiny cultural differences in the languages. Just because two words have the same dictionary definition doesn't mean they actually are equivalent. However, the quality of translation usually doesn't matter as much as the quality of a conversation precisely because a human wrote the original text and the recipient knows the target language and culture. >That might be an indication that one is more complex than the other. It just means that most of the work is done by the humans.
  - take_a_breath 7y ago
    You have to do the same thing when speaking. The addition of body language and tone, which text doesn’t have, make it more complex. If it was easier for computers to do it, they would. That humans do the work is further evidence it is more complex.

K0SM0S 7y ago

I totally agree. I find that the appeal of programming languages, their strength, fades away in the face of pure mathematics anyway. There's nothing like the full complement of a formal language, symbols, abstractions and all, one that you can write and read just as fluently as English. As for human languages, being bilingual myself (acquired over 30ish years (am 37), not innate), I can only testify that this is as close to having "two different minds" as it gets— the sheer experience of life is different depending on which language you think it in, you speak it or write it to others. That's as close as I can get experientially (qualia) to the notion that language is culture, civilization, thus psychological mindset (both individual and collective). It's a very weird experience of life to have this ability to switch between modes. Doesn't make you any smarter I guess, but certainly opens one's horizons, helps thinking 'out of the box' (i.e. perspective), reach more balanced views perhaps. I'd like to write a short piece about that someday. Hopefully later if #19 hasn't disposed of me by then. Note that there is little to no overlap with programming languages or math. You can think these domains in any human language, the translation in symbols/code remains identical, ideally (that's formalism to me, requiring mathematical rigor, not literature skills). As such, it is interesting and enriching to learn both— several human languages, and math (or at least one programming language). You gain things from each that do not exist in the other subset no matter how deep you look.

xkapastel 7y ago
> I find that the appeal of programming languages, their strength, fades away in the face of pure mathematics anyway. The appeal and strength of a programming language is its ability to be executed, something that pure mathematics does not and cannot ever have.
- martin__ 7y ago
  You might want to look into something called Constructivism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_proof https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_proof
imtringued 7y ago
>I totally agree. I find that the appeal of programming languages, their strength, fades away in the face of pure mathematics anyway. Then you haven't learned anything. Even pure mathematics is still expressed in arbitrary notation. It's no different than a programming language in that regard.

naasking 7y ago

> The reality is that programming languages are languages, but only for a very restricted vocabulary that is not even close to what can be done on human languages. Vocabulary is not the real difference. A word is an abstract concept given a definition in terms of other words. The equivalent of set of related words is an API in a programming language. The real difference is that natural languages are intended and optimized for speaking, and they inherently encourage ambiguity because conversation is an interactive process where one can request clarification. Programming languages are typically non-interactive and don't tolerate ambiguity at all.

hutzlibu 7y ago
"Vocabulary is not the real difference. " It also is. Because in a programming language every vocable is clearly defined when used, or you get an error. Words in natural languages are not really clearly defined. There is only a very small subset of words, people are not fighting over their definition. Thats why it is an art, to write a understandable book. Or give a lecture, the audience can understand. But you are right, languages are optimized for being spoken in 2 ways. With the possibilitie of clarification.
- imoverclocked 7y ago
  Clearly, you have never read the C spec.
  - hutzlibu 7y ago
    No I did not. But in the end, when it gets compiled, every word is clearly defined, or not?
    - grawprog 7y ago
      >C11(ISO/IEC 9899:201x) §3.4.3 >1 undefined behavior >behavior, upon use of a non portable or erroneous program construct or of erroneous data, for which this International Standard imposes no requirements >2 NOTE Possible undefined behavior ranges from ignoring the situation completely with unpredictable results, to behaving during translation or program execution in a documented manner characteristic of the environment (with or without the issuance of a diagnostic message), to terminating a translation or execution (with the issuance of a diagnostic message). >3 EXAMPLE An example of undefined behavior is the behavior on integer overflow.

godelski 7y ago

To add to this, there are extremely limiting languages like Toki Pona[0]. To construct complex ideas it relies heavily on combining words. But that's also a characteristic we see in most languages, especially in German and Chinese. The only difference I see is that we don't speak C++ (though you could argue that sometimes we do). Mostly because it is pretty laborious and not worth the effort when we have a common tongue (pun intended) between us. Spoken languages were created to communicate. They advanced to allow us to convey complex and highly abstract ideas. I wouldn't say programming languages were constructed with the same intent (at least they are intended to be interpreted by a computer, not by a human). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona

pgt 7y ago
I wonder what a Toki Pona for computer programming would look like.
- godelski 7y ago
  I mean... binary and assembly are things...
imtringued 7y ago
I always wonder why anyone would bother with pictograms for a new language. The Latin alphabet is just a bunch of strokes that can be trivially written in cursive. When you consider all the awful writing systems that exist around the world the Latin alphabet appears to be near perfect. Toki Pona is just adding one entry on the list of languages with awful writing systems.
- godelski 7y ago
  Chinese is pretty efficient as a language. I think there are things that are more obvious in traditional though. There are advantages and disadvantages to each. But beware self bias because you (I'm assuming) grew up with an alphabet based language.