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Dijkstra said that if we ever had the misfortune of having machines programmable in natural language, sooner or later someone would construct a formal language

by qsort 4y ago

Dijkstra said that if we ever had the misfortune of having machines programmable in natural language, sooner or later someone would construct a formal language over it. Playing out in real time. We're living legendary times.

rgbrgb 4y ago
Love this idea, would like to read more. Got a source?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jxy 4y ago
  https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd06xx/EWD667.PDF https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd06xx/EWD667.PDF > From one gut feeling I derive much consolation: I suspect that machines to be programmed in our native tongues—be it Dutch, English, American, French, German, or Swahili—are as damned difficult to make as they would be to use.
- qsort 4y ago
  > It may be illuminating to try to imagine what would have happened if, right from the start our native tongue would have been the only vehicle for the input into and the output from our information processing equipment. My considered guess is that history would, in a sense, have repeated itself, and that computer science would consist mainly of the indeed black art how to bootstrap from there to a sufficiently well-defined formal system. https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD667.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/E...
  - rgbrgb 4y ago
    thank you!
dragonwriter 4y ago
> Dijkstra said that if we ever had the misfortune of having machines programmable in natural language We have humans, and we spend a lot of time constructing formal specialized languages for specifying instructions, expected behavior, etc., for them (ironically, many of them, in the history of computing, specifically targeting the people whose job is to program computers), so that's... a pretty obvious prediction.
- qsort 4y ago
  From the abundance of people who are still after this "programming in natural language" nonsense, it seems to me like repetita iuvant.

by qsort 4y ago

rgbrgb 4y ago

Love this idea, would like to read more. Got a source?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jxy 4y ago
https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd06xx/EWD667.PDF https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd06xx/EWD667.PDF > From one gut feeling I derive much consolation: I suspect that machines to be programmed in our native tongues—be it Dutch, English, American, French, German, or Swahili—are as damned difficult to make as they would be to use.
qsort 4y ago
> It may be illuminating to try to imagine what would have happened if, right from the start our native tongue would have been the only vehicle for the input into and the output from our information processing equipment. My considered guess is that history would, in a sense, have repeated itself, and that computer science would consist mainly of the indeed black art how to bootstrap from there to a sufficiently well-defined formal system. https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD667.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/E...
- rgbrgb 4y ago
  thank you!

dragonwriter 4y ago

> Dijkstra said that if we ever had the misfortune of having machines programmable in natural language We have humans, and we spend a lot of time constructing formal specialized languages for specifying instructions, expected behavior, etc., for them (ironically, many of them, in the history of computing, specifically targeting the people whose job is to program computers), so that's... a pretty obvious prediction.

qsort 4y ago
From the abundance of people who are still after this "programming in natural language" nonsense, it seems to me like repetita iuvant.