Why him does not use a natural language for programming?

Mark Wieder mwieder at ahsoftware.net
Thu Feb 23 18:47:32 EST 2012


Bob Sneidar <bobs at ...> writes:

> 
> I may have misunderstood him then. I am not sure what the distinction between
English-like and natural
> English programming languages is however.

English-like:

filter tData with "From:*"

natural English:

keep only those lines in tData that start with "From:"

English-like syntax allows us to avoid ambiguities in natural English like

"Is the turkey ready to eat yet?" or
"I left her behind for you"

In the video, the word "biweekly" is the Schrodinger's Cat of natural language
computer processing... until we assign a definition to the term its nature is
ambiguous, and has two mutually-exclusive definitions. Once we decide on a
definition for the term it can be used in an English-like program, whether or
not that definition fits the real-world natural English definition.

-- 
 Mark Wieder







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