This is the best, most succinct and apt summary of the situation I've ever seen: "I contend that there is no sufficiently high level of abstraction where natura

This is the best, most succinct and apt summary of the situation I've ever seen: "I contend that there is no sufficiently high level of abstraction where natural language would be more suitable." I'm reminded of Paul Graham's remark about Prolog being more high level but not more terse, and that this had something to do with its present-day situation. Natural language is high level because it is terse and humans can supply a great deal of omitted information on their own. Teaching the computer how to supply that information is an incredibly error-prone burden. Teaching people how to use precise English seems to be worse than teaching people how to use a precise language that isn't English.