Question Will programming languages eventually become identical to natural language?

[Quantum Robin]

I found this information about language programming:

"Programming languages will end up being increasingly high-level until they become identical to natural language. You will eventually be able to write all your programs in English, Portuguese, or any other natural language, although you will also be able to mix that with instructions of the kind used in today’s programming languages whenever you think that’s more efficient or clearer".

"An intelligent compiler will ask for clarification whenever there’s an ambiguity and may suggest improved wordings to resolve the issue. Writing a program will end up being a conversation with an intelligent machine which anyone could handle even if they know nothing about programming - it will be a collaboration with an intelligent system which is in itself an expert programmer. The error messages will be comments and questions just like the ones you’d get if you were co-writing a program with a human programmer. (“When you say “print the result of that part”, do you mean this part [a section of the code is highlighted], and do you want it printed to the screen or the printer?”)
None of that will stop you putting in a line of C or any other programming language if you want to, but most of the work will simply be done in natural language, typically at a much higher level with the compiler working out how to carry out the tasks asked of it. The end user will also become a programmer, telling the machine how (s)he would prefer things to be done, and the machine will comply. That will rarely be done through anything other than natural language".

References:

https://forum.osdev.org/viewtopic.php?p=286902#p286902

https://forum.osdev.org/viewtopic.php?p=286905#p286905


Here are my questions about the subject:

Will programming languages end up being increasingly high-level until they become identical to natural language?

Will an intelligent compiler ask for clarification whenever there's an ambiguity?

 

[NTMBK]

Natural languages are horribly ambiguous and terrible at clearly conveying meaning.

 

[Quantum Robin]

Natural languages are horribly ambiguous and terrible at clearly conveying meaning.

What were the opinions of the first machine code programmers and Assembly programmers about human-language-level programming?

 

[Quantum Robin]

I edited the last question I posted on this topic, the last question is the following:

What were the opinions of the first machine code programmers and Assembly programmers about human-language-level programming?

 

[sandorski]

Depends on what you mean by "Programming". Alexa and other similar devices already give some glimpse of the merge of those Languages. It's not the same as Programming of the past, but it is a form of Programming. The actual programming of Apps using Natural Language can't be far off. It probably means adding some AI App/Device between the Programmer and Programming App.

 

[Quantum Robin]

Moderators and Administrators AnandTech Forums, please, answer this topic.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Moderators and Administrators AnandTech Forums, please, answer this topic.

No because, language will always be tied to culture which differs greatly within your own country let alone, another. The computer would not only have to know your cultural references but, your ethnicity, social class and, intent to name but a few variables. Computer languages are very structured and do not evolve as spoken language does. The Gerry Rzeppa thread pretty much beat the subject to death.

 

[Quantum Robin]

No because, language will always be tied to culture which differs greatly within your own country let alone, another. The computer would not only have to know your cultural references but, your ethnicity, social class and, intent to name but a few variables. Computer languages are very structured and do not evolve as spoken language does. The Gerry Rzeppa thread pretty much best the subject to death.

@MagnusTheBrewer,

Which is this Gerry Rzeppa thread?

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

@MagnusTheBrewer,

Which is this Gerry Rzeppa thread?

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/natural-language-programming.2358744/

 

[Quantum Robin]

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/natural-language-programming.2358744/

@MagnusTheBrewer,

Do you agree with Gerry Rzeppa about human-language-level programming?

If not, why?

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

@MagnusTheBrewer,

Do you agree with Gerry Rzeppa about human-language-level programming?

If not, why?

No and, I already gave my reasons in the afore mentioned link.

 

[Quantum Robin]

No and, I already gave my reasons in the afore mentioned link.

@MagnusTheBrewer,

The @Markbnj said in the afore mentioned topic:

This thread is lockbait.

"At this point, I agree. I don't think there's any further benefit to be gained, and the discussion is devolving into name calling. OP is free to create threads on topics specific to his project, but if the discussion heads in the same direction this one has then they will be locked too.

Markbnj"

All Moderators and Administrators AnandTech Forums approve the human-language-level programming?

If yes, why?

 

[Quantum Robin]

@MagnusTheBrewer, Moderators and Administrators AnandTech Forums,

I edited the last question that I posted on this topic:

@MagnusTheBrewer,

The @Markbnj said in the afore mentioned topic:

"This thread is lockbait.

At this point, I agree. I don't think there's any further benefit to be gained, and the discussion is devolving into name calling. OP is free to create threads on topics specific to his project, but if the discussion heads in the same direction this one has then they will be locked too.

Markbnj"

All Moderators and Administrators AnandTech Forums approve the human-language-level programming?

If yes, why?

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

One of the key components to any high level programming language is reusability. How can code be reused when terms are defined differently? Not only won't it compile, the new coder may not understand the previous definition due to the factors I mentioned before.

 

[Quantum Robin]

One of the key components to any high level programming language is reusability. How can code be reused when terms are defined differently? Not only won't it compile, the new coder may not understand the previous definition due to the factors I mentioned before.

@MagnusTheBrewer,

Thanks for the your response that I quoted above.

 

[Quantum Robin]

Moderators and Administrators AnandTech Forums,

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/natural-language-programming.2358744/

The @Markbnj said in the afore mentioned topic:

"This thread is lockbait.

At this point, I agree. I don't think there's any further benefit to be gained, and the discussion is devolving into name calling. OP is free to create threads on topics specific to his project, but if the discussion heads in the same direction this one has then they will be locked too.

Markbnj"

All Moderators and Administrators AnandTech Forums approve the human-language-level programming?

If not, why?

 

[esquared]

Please don't ask the same question over and over.

esquared
Anandtech Forum Director

 

[Cogman]

Moderators and Administrators AnandTech Forums,



The @Markbnj said in the afore mentioned topic:

"This thread is lockbait.

At this point, I agree. I don't think there's any further benefit to be gained, and the discussion is devolving into name calling. OP is free to create threads on topics specific to his project, but if the discussion heads in the same direction this one has then they will be locked too.

Markbnj"

All Moderators and Administrators AnandTech Forums approve the human-language-level programming?

If not, why?

They did. The thread ran its course though. Gerry was completely unwilling to take on any sort of critique of the language he invented. The debate became super circular because he simply was not willing to concede any point.

But, long and short of it, it is a horrible idea. Natural language is far too ambiguous and unstructured. The dozen programs Gerry showed off would have been nightmares to maintain and work in. Particularly because he styled it as a a book.

In general, white space in programming is nearly as important as the actual logic. His language removed all white space.

His language had a lot of other problems. It was closed source (not a good start for a new programming language!) and commercial. It did manual memory management (yikes!). Further, it basically threw away words that it didn't understand. Figuring out if you had a working sentence was neigh impossible.

You don't communicate math using sentences and paragraphs. You do it using formulas and equations. Programming is all about describing formulas, equations, and algorithms.

 

[Quantum Robin]

They did. The thread ran its course though. Gerry was completely unwilling to take on any sort of critique of the language he invented. The debate became super circular because he simply was not willing to concede any point.

But, long and short of it, it is a horrible idea. Natural language is far too ambiguous and unstructured. The dozen programs Gerry showed off would have been nightmares to maintain and work in. Particularly because he styled it as a a book.

Why the dozen programs Gerry showed off would have been nightmares to maintain and work in?

 

[Cogman]

Why the dozen programs Gerry showed off would have been nightmares to maintain and work in?

Here is an example application taken from here

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/creating-wysiwyg-document-editor/

To group any selected shapes on a page:
If the page is nil, exit.
Create a group shape.
Put "group" into the group shape's kind.
Put the page's scale into the group shape's scale.
Move the page's shapes to some original shapes.
Loop.
Put the original shapes' first into a shape.
If the shape is nil, break.
Remove the shape from the original shapes.
If the shape is not selected, append the shape to the page's shapes; repeat.
Deselect the shape.
Append the shape to the group shape's shapes.
Repeat.
Append the group shape to the page's shapes.
Select the group shape.
Adjust the group shape.

Now some questions.

What is the function name?

What parameters does that function take?

WTF is "Loop." looping over?

What are the data structures involved here?

What are the variables?

You can sort of get to the point, looking at this, where you might be able to grok what is what, and what is going on. However, if this code has an issue, it would take forever to figure what is going wrong. That is what makes this a maintenance nightmare.

And what did this buy you? It added a bunch of ambiguity all for the sake of being "plain" English.

 

[whm1974]

It doesn't sound like a plain English programing language would be useful at all.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

It doesn't sound like a plain English programing language would be useful at all.

It's not. Plain language has inherent structure while programming language has internal structure. The two are not interchangeable.

 

[Quantum Robin]

Hello!

What are the statements of Ruby professional programmers about Plain English?

Merged into the OP's main natural language programming thread -- Programming Moderator Ken g6

 

[whm1974]

It's not. Plain language has inherent structure while programming language has internal structure. The two are not interchangeable.

Well then why would anyone bother with tying to develop a PL out of plain English anyway, if it is nearly useless for computer programing?

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Well then why would anyone bother with tying to develop a PL out of plain English anyway, if it is nearly useless for computer programing?

Some folks believe everything in Star Trek is doable. I think useful pl programming is dependent on true ai. It's advocates think it's just a series of incremental steps. The reality is it requires a radical break through with a fundamentally different approach.