OT: Is there a more English-like Programming language than Transcript?

Dan Shafer revolutionary.dan at gmail.com
Thu Aug 10 19:39:26 EDT 2006


As a language junkie I'd say xTalks including Transcript are easily and by
far the most English-like programming languages on the planet. Like all
languages, it has some constructs that don't come out very English-like but
I don't know of any other language that comes close.

And, to answer your opening question, Runtime Revolution is trying hard to
get us to call the language Revolution. I'm resisting and I suspect lots of
other folks are as well. I consider that a silly and ill-advised terminology
change. But in their official literature, it's now Revolution which you
program in...er...Revolution.

On 8/10/06, David Bovill <david at openpartnership.net> wrote:
>
> By the way is Transcript still the official term for Revs programming
> language?
>
> Spent an hour looking for links references and articles on English-like
> programming languages - looking at the syntax. Found no good links yet.
> Lots
> of stuff about COBOL, things about how it was the flavour of the month in
> the 80's - how good perl is. Here is a nice quote from
> http://www.whynot.net/ideas/1441:
>
>     By this, I mean the source file would be something like a text file..
> and the interpreter would interpret the english language commands and
> build
> a program based on it. The commands for the English Programming Language
> could be something like this (consider this a raw source file):
>
>     <begin source>
> >
> >     First, create a window approximately 75% of the screen size. Then,
> add
> > two menus to the top, one File and one Help. Under the File menu, add
> Exit.
> > When a user clicks on Exit, the program should exit. Under the help
> menu,
> > add a simple About option that describes this program.
> >
> >     Now create two buttons in the main window (the first one). The first
> > button should say "Message", and the second one should say "Exit"
> (without
> > the quotes). When a user clicks on Message, a message box should pop up
> > saying "Hello, World!". When the user clicks on the Exit button, the
> program
> > should exit.
> >
> >     <end source>
> >
>
> Now that would be more English-like than Transcript, but to date i cannot
> find anything much more English-like than the syntax of Transcript. There
> is
> some AI stuff like -
> http://www.softwaretheories.com/Examples/index.html(not a good link) -
> and Ruslan you there - some older links I had for
> parsers that took XML - there is an MIT project to create a meta
> language...
> but no good links I can find - and certainly nothing solid and useable.
>
> So the question is this - is Transcipt the best real programming language
> out there in terms of it's English-likeness! That is the ease in which a
> non-programmer, or non-speaker of the computer language can understand it?
>
> Help, links, rants and gossip appreciated!
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-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dan Shafer, Information Product Consultant and Author
http://www.shafermedia.com
Get my book, "Revolution: Software at the Speed of Thought"
>From http://www.shafermediastore.com/tech_main.html



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