4 ms·

if you could throw it at a python interpreter and run it then that wouldn't be english.

• PeterisP 6y ago
  I'd argue that "precise and clear enough description" means using a subset of English that's more complicated and much, much more verbose than python. Have you read laws? That is the style of language that tries to make a "precise and clear enough description" in English, but it does not go far enough, it's still not sufficiently precise to be applied directly, you would have to use something like 'super-legalese' for that. So even if you had a system that could accept English, nobody would want to use that because it's difficult to express precise and clear enough descriptions in English, and easier to do so in Python or some other programming language; and in any case, the difficult part of programming is thinking up the precise and clear enough descriptions. This comes up in writing specifications for outsourced programmers. Writing a specification in English that's clear and actually precise enough takes more work than just writing the code directly - since you have to do all the hard part anyway, and then have to express it in a language that's poorly suited to do so. And a reasonable specification is very much not precise enough to be executed, it relies on the programmer putting in a lot of the details based on their domain understanding and common sense, leading to very different implementations as that domain understanding and common sense varies.
  • matz1 6y ago
    >So even if you had a system that could accept English, nobody would want to use that because it's difficult to express precise and clear enough descriptions in English Yes but in the future this can be solved by the smarter AI. Essentially that what a lot of developer do, they turn other people idea or english description into working code.