5 ms·

Of course it doesn't! But I'm interested to know if that's also the case when reading cooking recipes or instruction manuals?

phnofive 6y ago
Or a blueprint, or sheet music, or telegraph transcription, or stenography, or anything where language is a non-prosaic abstraction.
- kroltan 6y ago
  Or perhaps legalese?
  - goodpoint 6y ago
    Not at all. Legalese is human language and it's the opposite of programming: the shorter the text the more fuzzy and unclear it is.
    - brodie 6y ago
      I can't tell if you're talking about legalese or programming. Oh well. Time to go code golfing!
      - red75prime 6y ago
        Short code may seem unclear, but it does do exactly the same thing as longer code (if written correctly). It's exact opposite of natural language, where short sentences heavily rely on context and supposedly shared knowledge to beget correct understanding. And as such short sentences are prone to misinterpretation. A program can also be seen as an awkward natural language, conveying programmer's intention to other programmers, of course. But it's a different modality of the code.
        goodpoint 6y ago
        > short sentences are prone to misinterpretation Exactly. That's why laws or contracts written by lawyers are so verbose. Think of a rent contract or a software license like GPL. Contrast with WTFPL and similar...
        kroltan 6y ago
        Which is why I compared to legalese rather than arbitrary natural-language. My argument would be that legalese with its strict "May" "Should"s and all that could be sufficiently similar to a (verbose) programming language. Anecdotally, I certainly have entered "debugging" mode when trying to check if a specific clause of a contract was applicable to my situation before, rather than trying to interpret it liberally. Of course, anecdote, and only demonstrates that the (my) brain _can_ operate "programmingly" when reading legalese, not that it does so "naturally".
santraginean 6y ago
With recipes, I suspect it depends on how the recipe is written. Usually they're quite prose-heavy, and require a lot of linguistic parsing before you start to get the meaning out of them. It's interesting to think about, and makes me suspect that this is why I tend to prefer writing my own recipes out as tersely as possible, particularly if I know the general procedure. At this point I don't need to be told to preheat an oven or to scrape down the sides of the stand mixer, so I'll just write down things like "Creaming method, 350° in 8x8 cake pan." I might even start writing them in pseudocode now. My partner takes it a step further with her cranberry sauce recipe; the instructions just say "C'mon."

phnofive 6y ago

Or a blueprint, or sheet music, or telegraph transcription, or stenography, or anything where language is a non-prosaic abstraction.

kroltan 6y ago
Or perhaps legalese?
- goodpoint 6y ago
  Not at all. Legalese is human language and it's the opposite of programming: the shorter the text the more fuzzy and unclear it is.
  - brodie 6y ago
    I can't tell if you're talking about legalese or programming. Oh well. Time to go code golfing!
    - red75prime 6y ago
      Short code may seem unclear, but it does do exactly the same thing as longer code (if written correctly). It's exact opposite of natural language, where short sentences heavily rely on context and supposedly shared knowledge to beget correct understanding. And as such short sentences are prone to misinterpretation. A program can also be seen as an awkward natural language, conveying programmer's intention to other programmers, of course. But it's a different modality of the code.
      - goodpoint 6y ago
        > short sentences are prone to misinterpretation Exactly. That's why laws or contracts written by lawyers are so verbose. Think of a rent contract or a software license like GPL. Contrast with WTFPL and similar...
        kroltan 6y ago
        Which is why I compared to legalese rather than arbitrary natural-language. My argument would be that legalese with its strict "May" "Should"s and all that could be sufficiently similar to a (verbose) programming language. Anecdotally, I certainly have entered "debugging" mode when trying to check if a specific clause of a contract was applicable to my situation before, rather than trying to interpret it liberally. Of course, anecdote, and only demonstrates that the (my) brain _can_ operate "programmingly" when reading legalese, not that it does so "naturally".

santraginean 6y ago

With recipes, I suspect it depends on how the recipe is written. Usually they're quite prose-heavy, and require a lot of linguistic parsing before you start to get the meaning out of them. It's interesting to think about, and makes me suspect that this is why I tend to prefer writing my own recipes out as tersely as possible, particularly if I know the general procedure. At this point I don't need to be told to preheat an oven or to scrape down the sides of the stand mixer, so I'll just write down things like "Creaming method, 350° in 8x8 cake pan." I might even start writing them in pseudocode now. My partner takes it a step further with her cranberry sauce recipe; the instructions just say "C'mon."