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Not sure how I feel about Shakespeare and JK Rowling living in the same parenthesis! Computer languages are the opposite of natural languages - they are for fo

Not sure how I feel about Shakespeare and JK Rowling living in the same parenthesis! Computer languages are the opposite of natural languages - they are for formalising and limiting thought, the exact opposite of literature. These two things are not comparable. If natural language was so good for programs, we’d be using it - many many people have tried from literate programming onward.

librasteve 8mo ago
I fully accept that formalism is an important factor in programming language design. But all HLLs (well, even ASM) are a compromise between machine speak (https://youtu.be/CTjolEUj00g?si=79zMVRl0oMQo4Tby https://youtu.be/CTjolEUj00g?si=79zMVRl0oMQo4Tby) and human speak. My case is that the current fashion is to draw the line at an overly simple level, and that there are ways to wrap the formalism in more natural constructs that trigger the parts of the brain that have evolved to hanle language (nouns, verbs, adverbs, prepositions and so on). Here's a very simple, lexical declaration made more human friendly by use of the preposition `my` (or `our` if it is packaged scoped)... my $x = 42;
- j_w 8mo ago
  How is that snippet any better than: x := 42 Or let x = 42 Or x = 42 It seems like a regression from modern languages.
  - bmn__ 8mo ago
    "my" is 33% shorter than "let" Example 1 and 3 are not declarations, so apples ↔ oranges
    - yossi_peti 8mo ago
      Example 1 is a declaration in Go. Example 3 is a declaration in Python.
    - j_w 8mo ago
      my $x = 42; let x = 42 Well, when you add in the '$' and ';' tokens the "let" example is still shorter. Also as another person replied to you, those other two examples are declarations in other languages. So 0 for 3 there.
- grey-area 8mo ago
  Have you looked at all the previous attempts? Your example is not compelling I’m afraid but you should try building a language to see. Also read literate programming if you haven’t already.
palata 8mo ago
Natural languages are ambiguous, and that's a feature. Computer languages must be unambiguous. I don't see a case for "complex" vs "simple" in the comparison with natural languages.
tom_m 8mo ago
Exactly. I mean think about the programming languages used in aircraft and such. There's reasons. It all depends on what people are willing to tolerate.
h3lp 8mo ago
Literate programming is not about programming in natural languages: it's about integrating code (i.e. the formal description in some DSL) with the meta-code such as comments, background information, specs, tests, etc. BTW, one side benefit of LP is freedom from arbitrary structure of DSLs. A standard practice in LP is to declare and define objects in the spot in which they are being used; LP tools will parse them out and distribute to the syntactically correct places.
- grey-area 8mo ago
  Well I think the ambition was to have as much as possible in natural language, with macros calling out to ‘hidden’ code intended for machines. So I do think there is a good link with later attempts to write using natural language and make computer languages more human-friendly and he was one of the first to have this idea. Neither strategy has had much success IMO.

librasteve 8mo ago

I fully accept that formalism is an important factor in programming language design. But all HLLs (well, even ASM) are a compromise between machine speak (https://youtu.be/CTjolEUj00g?si=79zMVRl0oMQo4Tby https://youtu.be/CTjolEUj00g?si=79zMVRl0oMQo4Tby) and human speak. My case is that the current fashion is to draw the line at an overly simple level, and that there are ways to wrap the formalism in more natural constructs that trigger the parts of the brain that have evolved to hanle language (nouns, verbs, adverbs, prepositions and so on). Here's a very simple, lexical declaration made more human friendly by use of the preposition `my` (or `our` if it is packaged scoped)... my $x = 42;

j_w 8mo ago
How is that snippet any better than: x := 42 Or let x = 42 Or x = 42 It seems like a regression from modern languages.
- bmn__ 8mo ago
  "my" is 33% shorter than "let" Example 1 and 3 are not declarations, so apples ↔ oranges
  - yossi_peti 8mo ago
    Example 1 is a declaration in Go. Example 3 is a declaration in Python.
  - j_w 8mo ago
    my $x = 42; let x = 42 Well, when you add in the '$' and ';' tokens the "let" example is still shorter. Also as another person replied to you, those other two examples are declarations in other languages. So 0 for 3 there.
grey-area 8mo ago
Have you looked at all the previous attempts? Your example is not compelling I’m afraid but you should try building a language to see. Also read literate programming if you haven’t already.

palata 8mo ago

Natural languages are ambiguous, and that's a feature. Computer languages must be unambiguous. I don't see a case for "complex" vs "simple" in the comparison with natural languages.

tom_m 8mo ago

Exactly. I mean think about the programming languages used in aircraft and such. There's reasons. It all depends on what people are willing to tolerate.

h3lp 8mo ago

Literate programming is not about programming in natural languages: it's about integrating code (i.e. the formal description in some DSL) with the meta-code such as comments, background information, specs, tests, etc. BTW, one side benefit of LP is freedom from arbitrary structure of DSLs. A standard practice in LP is to declare and define objects in the spot in which they are being used; LP tools will parse them out and distribute to the syntactically correct places.

grey-area 8mo ago
Well I think the ambition was to have as much as possible in natural language, with macros calling out to ‘hidden’ code intended for machines. So I do think there is a good link with later attempts to write using natural language and make computer languages more human-friendly and he was one of the first to have this idea. Neither strategy has had much success IMO.