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On the foolishness of "natural language programming" (utexas.edu)
4 points by DavidSJ on July 2, 2008 | hide | past | favorite | 1 comment



The creation of artificial languages is about finding new ways to express patterns we humans have hallucinated from our man-made sea of 1s and 0s. Shortcuts for expression. Languages will continue to become more dynamic. It's really a gradient from "artificial language" to "natural language". The evolution of programming languages has them approaching natural language as higher-level languages are developed (as opposed to, say, assembly), but it's rather silly to think that the ideal for an artificial language would ever be to embody the state of a natural language. Will artificial language ever embody natural language? What happens when the utility of artificial languages exceeds that of natural languages? Will our daily conversations one day be held in Ruby 3.1?

- "Make me a sandwich." ~ "Make it yourelf." - "Sudo make me a sandwich." ~ "Okay."




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