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The method signature is the low-hanging fruit. Try the method body. ADD: Do you accept that programming has its basis in mathematics and logic? If so, how is m

by Cyranix 14y ago

The method signature is the low-hanging fruit. Try the method body. ADD: Do you accept that programming has its basis in mathematics and logic? If so, how is making computer languages resemble human languages a more direct way to improve comprehension than learning some math? Walking up a mountain path is difficult, but not nearly so difficult as moving the mountain until it lies beneath one's feet.

einhverfr 14y ago
I don't see anything wrong with the message body. The point is we are talking about similarity, not identity. I have been clear: you can't program in English but there is some benefit to having languages which are easy for English-speakers to learn. > Do you accept that programming has its basis in mathematics and logic? This is one of the foundations of programming, particularly pronounced in technical fields. As you get to solving higher level problems however, other things come into play. For example, suppose we are building a robot to automate some physical process (let's say, making coffee). We are going to have low-level programming which takes care of ensuring that we can tell the robot what exactly we want to do. If resources are tight we may do all of this low-level, but if we can spend more on resources we might want to have a higher-level (scripting, if you will) environment for brewing coffee. On the higher level, our calculations are not going to be how many j of heat to add to the water. They will be what temperature to bring the water to. We may specify how finely the grounds are to be ground, etc. These instructions will resemble a cookbook recipe more than they will resemble a mathematical diagram, and this is the difference between high-level and low-level languages. > If so, how is making computer languages resemble human languages a more direct way to improve comprehension than learning some math? but the similarity is not just in vocabulary. In English we might write "three plus two equals five" where "plus" is essentially a conjunction, three and two are subjects, equals is a verb, and five is the predicate/object. This works because English has a subject-verb-object verb. Similarly a equals b plus c tells us that we can find out the value of a by adding b and c. In English there is a difference between a = b + c and b + c = a. There may not be a logical difference but there is a semantic difference that does not exist in pure math. So let's imagine math written in another language, Irish Gaelic, translated word-for-word into English and ignoring conjucated prepositions. Irish Gaelic has a verb-subject-object word order, so we might write equals a adding and c. Maybe a nice way to represent this symbolically would be (= a (+ b c)). There wouldn't be a computer language like that, would there be? The problem though that lisp encounters is that it is disorienting, and it is disorienting because the structure bears no resemblance to English. If English-Likeness is a problem, surely that applies to word order and other syntactic similarities just as much as it applies to lexical similarities.
- Cyranix 14y ago
  > Maybe a nice way to represent this symbolically would be (= a (+ b c)). There wouldn't be a computer language like that, would there be? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_notation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_notation -- is that what you're looking for? Sorry, no time to continue the debate. You're welcome to keep believing, and human-languages interactions sure would be neat at any level, but I'm coming from too pragmatic an angle to believe this will happen before a complete mapping of the human brain or the singularity.
  - einhverfr 14y ago
    > You're welcome to keep believing, and human-languages interactions sure would be neat at any level, but I'm coming from too pragmatic an angle to believe this will happen before a complete mapping of the human brain or the singularity. Ummm straw man there. My point was just that computer languages which leverage people's existing understanding of natural languages do better than those which don't. I said way up at the beginning of my post that the constraints were totally different and that natural languages are quite a bit further from computer languages than we like to think. I thought we were talking about likeness, not substitutability.
- CodeMage 14y ago
  I don't see anything wrong with the message body. Let me see if I got that right. You see the need to transform: float Q_rsqrt( float number ) into: DECLARE FUNCTION q_rsqrt (float number) THAT RETURNS float AS but you see no need to do anything to: long i; float x2, y; const float threehalfs = 1.5F; x2 = number * 0.5F; y = number; i = * ( long * ) &y; i = 0x5f3759df - ( i >> 1 ); y = * ( float * ) &i; y = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) ); return y; I intentionally didn't refer to your later, more "concise" attempt, because the topic of discussion is the "English -Likeness" and, unlike "DECLARE FUNCTION q_rsqrt (float number) THAT RETURNS float AS", your "float function sqrt(float number)" doesn't add English likeness to the syntax. Now, your assertion was that "what English-likeness does is it speeds up learning". Since we're all just flinging around theories unsupported by research and data, I'd like to posit that the main motivation behind attempts to do away with programming languages and replace them with natural languages is the misconception that you can learn to program without learning to think like a programmer. It doesn't really have much to do with syntax itself, it has to do with inherent complexity of programming. To take your example, Lisp uses an unusual syntax which makes it disorienting at first. This "disorientation" is something people will deal with in a matter of days, whereas their struggle to plumb the depths of macros and functional programming will take much, much longer. All in all, I believe that small degrees[1] of "English-Likeness" might help English speakers learn the syntax of the language a bit faster, but that benefit would prove insignificant when compared to the rest of the effort necessary to learn to program. [1]: Small enough to avoid "polluting" the language with the problems @raganwald writes about.

by Cyranix 14y ago

einhverfr 14y ago

I don't see anything wrong with the message body. The point is we are talking about similarity, not identity. I have been clear: you can't program in English but there is some benefit to having languages which are easy for English-speakers to learn. > Do you accept that programming has its basis in mathematics and logic? This is one of the foundations of programming, particularly pronounced in technical fields. As you get to solving higher level problems however, other things come into play. For example, suppose we are building a robot to automate some physical process (let's say, making coffee). We are going to have low-level programming which takes care of ensuring that we can tell the robot what exactly we want to do. If resources are tight we may do all of this low-level, but if we can spend more on resources we might want to have a higher-level (scripting, if you will) environment for brewing coffee. On the higher level, our calculations are not going to be how many j of heat to add to the water. They will be what temperature to bring the water to. We may specify how finely the grounds are to be ground, etc. These instructions will resemble a cookbook recipe more than they will resemble a mathematical diagram, and this is the difference between high-level and low-level languages. > If so, how is making computer languages resemble human languages a more direct way to improve comprehension than learning some math? but the similarity is not just in vocabulary. In English we might write "three plus two equals five" where "plus" is essentially a conjunction, three and two are subjects, equals is a verb, and five is the predicate/object. This works because English has a subject-verb-object verb. Similarly a equals b plus c tells us that we can find out the value of a by adding b and c. In English there is a difference between a = b + c and b + c = a. There may not be a logical difference but there is a semantic difference that does not exist in pure math. So let's imagine math written in another language, Irish Gaelic, translated word-for-word into English and ignoring conjucated prepositions. Irish Gaelic has a verb-subject-object word order, so we might write equals a adding and c. Maybe a nice way to represent this symbolically would be (= a (+ b c)). There wouldn't be a computer language like that, would there be? The problem though that lisp encounters is that it is disorienting, and it is disorienting because the structure bears no resemblance to English. If English-Likeness is a problem, surely that applies to word order and other syntactic similarities just as much as it applies to lexical similarities.

Cyranix 14y ago
> Maybe a nice way to represent this symbolically would be (= a (+ b c)). There wouldn't be a computer language like that, would there be? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_notation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_notation -- is that what you're looking for? Sorry, no time to continue the debate. You're welcome to keep believing, and human-languages interactions sure would be neat at any level, but I'm coming from too pragmatic an angle to believe this will happen before a complete mapping of the human brain or the singularity.
- einhverfr 14y ago
  > You're welcome to keep believing, and human-languages interactions sure would be neat at any level, but I'm coming from too pragmatic an angle to believe this will happen before a complete mapping of the human brain or the singularity. Ummm straw man there. My point was just that computer languages which leverage people's existing understanding of natural languages do better than those which don't. I said way up at the beginning of my post that the constraints were totally different and that natural languages are quite a bit further from computer languages than we like to think. I thought we were talking about likeness, not substitutability.
CodeMage 14y ago
I don't see anything wrong with the message body. Let me see if I got that right. You see the need to transform: float Q_rsqrt( float number ) into: DECLARE FUNCTION q_rsqrt (float number) THAT RETURNS float AS but you see no need to do anything to: long i; float x2, y; const float threehalfs = 1.5F; x2 = number * 0.5F; y = number; i = * ( long * ) &y; i = 0x5f3759df - ( i >> 1 ); y = * ( float * ) &i; y = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) ); return y; I intentionally didn't refer to your later, more "concise" attempt, because the topic of discussion is the "English -Likeness" and, unlike "DECLARE FUNCTION q_rsqrt (float number) THAT RETURNS float AS", your "float function sqrt(float number)" doesn't add English likeness to the syntax. Now, your assertion was that "what English-likeness does is it speeds up learning". Since we're all just flinging around theories unsupported by research and data, I'd like to posit that the main motivation behind attempts to do away with programming languages and replace them with natural languages is the misconception that you can learn to program without learning to think like a programmer. It doesn't really have much to do with syntax itself, it has to do with inherent complexity of programming. To take your example, Lisp uses an unusual syntax which makes it disorienting at first. This "disorientation" is something people will deal with in a matter of days, whereas their struggle to plumb the depths of macros and functional programming will take much, much longer. All in all, I believe that small degrees[1] of "English-Likeness" might help English speakers learn the syntax of the language a bit faster, but that benefit would prove insignificant when compared to the rest of the effort necessary to learn to program. [1]: Small enough to avoid "polluting" the language with the problems @raganwald writes about.