Question Will programming languages eventually become identical to natural language?

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Q

Quantum Robin

Member
Jan 3, 2019
49
3
16
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?
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
W

whm1974

Diamond Member
Jul 24, 2016
9,460
1,570
96
MagnusTheBrewer said:
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.
Click to expand...
While Star Trek was ahead of it's time with some things, it is still not Hard Science Friction.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
MagnusTheBrewer

MagnusTheBrewer

IN MEMORIAM
Jun 19, 2004
24,135
1,594
126
whm1974 said:
While Star Trek was ahead of it's time with some things, it is still not Hard Science Friction.
Click to expand...
The problem with the incremental approach is it's based on hardware and the maths of logic. Through the magic of imagination, think about a future computer worn on your wrist and powered by your body heat. It has 10,000 cores, 1000 petabytes of memory accessible in the femtosecond range and able to self program according to your interests and personality. It can also communicate wirelessly with everyone else's computer. Do you think it's suddenly going to wake up and be self aware? Or, following the dictates of logic, will it merely warn you the chances of winning the lottery or getting a date with that cute red headed girl are roughly the same?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Quantum Robin
Upvote 0 Downvote
W

whm1974

Diamond Member
Jul 24, 2016
9,460
1,570
96
MagnusTheBrewer said:
The problem with the incremental approach is it's based on hardware and the maths of logic. Through the magic of imagination, think about a future computer worn on your wrist and powered by your body heat. It has 10,000 cores, 1000 petabytes of memory accessible in the femtosecond range and able to self program according to your interests and personality. It can also communicate wirelessly with everyone else's computer. Do you think it's suddenly going to wake up and be self aware? Or, following the dictates of logic, will it merely warn you the chances of winning the lottery or getting a date with that cute red headed girl are roughly the same?
Click to expand...
Well I think those worried about Roko's Basilisk have actually nothing to worry about.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LessWrong#Roko's_basilisk
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Cogman

Cogman

Lifer
Sep 19, 2000
10,277
125
106
Quantum Robin said:
Why nobody answer me?
Click to expand...

Because the answer is both in this thread and in the Natural Language programming thread. You are asking us to answer a question that has been answered.

In short. No, nobody uses it. Why? Because it is a bad idea and the compiler itself is closed source (I'm not installing some random binary from some random guy on my computer).

There is no more discussion to be had.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Quantum Robin
Upvote 0 Downvote
W

whm1974

Diamond Member
Jul 24, 2016
9,460
1,570
96
Cogman said:
Because the answer is both in this thread and in the Natural Language programming thread. You are asking us to answer a question that has been answered.

In short. No, nobody uses it. Why? Because it is a bad idea and the compiler itself is closed source (I'm not installing some random binary from some random guy on my computer).

There is no more discussion to be had.
Click to expand...
If I was going to learn a Programming Language it will be something useful like Java or Python instead of something that one guy made up that is completely useless.

Or Perhaps even Rust?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(programming_language)
 
  • Like
Reactions: Quantum Robin
Upvote 0 Downvote
Q

Quantum Robin

Member
Jan 3, 2019
49
3
16
Hi!

I posted the topic "Do You Approve the Plain English"? in Hacker News because the following Merad's answer and Crusty's answer made me curious:

Merad said:

"I'm not even sure what this means in the context of your post, considering that you basically go on to say that your editor does everything and does it all perfectly.

Anyway, if you think that we are unique in our criticisms of your language, editor, and methodologies, I strongly encourage you to post on places such as the programming subreddit or Hacker News so that you can get more feedback from professional developers".

Reference: https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/natural-language-programming.2358744/page-11#post-36972649

Crusty said:

"Yes, please post this on Hacker News. I would love to read the discussion there".

Reference: https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/natural-language-programming.2358744/page-11#post-36973307

The link of topic that I posted about Plain English in Hacker News is the following link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19355965

The quickthrower2 answered these topic:

"Sorry to be a naysayer, but I don’t think plain English makes programming any easier. The program on that link is nothing like how you’d talk, because it still requires the logical breaking down a problem into steps of regular programming. Also with many ways of saying the same thing, reading the program becomes harder. Because now you need to map the different English phrases to “what the computer really does” underneath".

Do you agree with quickthrower2?

If not, why not?

gus_massa answered these topic:

"Why not standard dialog box for loading and saving programs? I remember using GW-Basic that didn't have them, and it was painful. I recommend innovating in only one direction.
About the scrollbars: Weird decision, but I think I can live without them.
Do you have a GitHub repo and/or a playable demo?
The problem with English-like languages is that they are easy to read but difficult to write. You can write a lot of sentences, but when you hit a corner case it's very difficult to understand what failed. For example:
Draw a line at the top of the screen with the green pen.
Draw a green line at the top of the screen.
Using the green pen, draw a line at the top of the screen.
Since you allow spaces in procedure names, parsing mutually recursive procedures must be very difficult. Can the program do this?
Anyway. I read that you have a Spanish version of the Language. [Hi from Argentina!] Spanish has a few declinations. For example, you say "linea roja" and "cuadrado rojo". Is Spanish more difficult? Also, the adjetive usually go after the noun, so the parser for the nicknames (aka variables) must be different.
Do you plan to support German, they write Compositewords without a Spaceseparator. And they have a lot of declinations too".

Do you agree with gus_massa?

If not, why not?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Q

Quantum Robin

Member
Jan 3, 2019
49
3
16
The David Cooper said about Plain English in Quora:

If programming languages are for the benefit of human beings rather than the naked hardware, then why are computer scientists unable to create much higher level languages?

David Cooper, AGI-system Programmer
Answered Fri
https://www.quora.com/If-programmin...gher-level-languages/answer/David-Cooper-613#


"In case it hasn’t been mentioned already, there’s a programming language called Plain English Programming The Osmosian Order of Plain English Programmers Welcomes You . This illustrates a move in the direction of higher level programming, but most people who’ve seen it don’t feel motivated to switch to using it because it still has severe limits on how you phrase things and it switches into gobbledygook whenever things get hard. However, the problems can be solved once we get more intelligence in the machine, and all the problems with the ambiguities of natural language will be resolved - you’ll just hold a conversation with the machine and it will ask for confirmation whenever there are multiple interpretations of anything to make sure it’s gone for the right one. The compiler will help you write the program, tightening up the instructions. This will allow anyone to write complex programs without needing to study any specialist programming languages at all, and even the deficiencies of their own intelligence will be made up for by the intelligence of the compiler. The compiler will effectively become the expert programmer, while the human is merely the person who tells it what (s)he wants it to do, and all human programmers will end up being reduced to the level of the customer who wants a program to carry out a task. This also means that ordinary users of software will be able to modify it to suit their own requirements just by asking it to do things differently, and the operating system will be just as malleable. That is where we will end up, and it will all be natural language for us while the compiler intelligently turns our desires into machine code. All that’s holding us back is the intelligence requirement - once we have it, programming languages will become extinct overnight".

Reference: https://www.quora.com/If-programmin...igher-level-languages/answer/David-Cooper-613

Do you agree with David Cooper about Plain English?

If not, why not?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
A

Amol S.

Platinum Member
Mar 14, 2015
2,390
709
136
NTMBK said:
Natural languages are horribly ambiguous and terrible at clearly conveying meaning.
Click to expand...
Example:
"She has cancer." That sentence means, someone has been diagnosed by the doctor or a health professional for having cancer.

However, the example that follows means something totally different.

"That man is very cancerous." That sentence uses the term cancer in a slang form, meaning the subject that is being described is an unwanted object or person that should not be interacted with, otherwise it would lead to an unwanted ending.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom