Tech · cs.utexas.edu
The foolishness of "natural language programming" (1978)
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On the foolishness of "natural language programming".
Key facts
- Machine code, with its absence of almost any form of redundancy, was soon identified as a needlessly risky interface between man and machine
- Programming remained the use of a formal symbolism and, as such, continued to require the care and accuracy required
- It sounds sensible provided you blame the obligation to use a formal symbolism as the source of your difficulties
- A short look at the history of mathematics shows how justified this challenge
Summary
Since the early days of automatic computing they have had people that have felt it as a shortcoming that programming required the care and accuracy that is characteristic for the use of any formal symbolism. Machine code, with its absence of almost any form of redundancy, was soon identified as a needlessly risky interface between man and machine. To make machines significantly easier to use, it has been proposed (to try) to design machines that they could instruct in their native tongues. this would, admittedly, make the machines much more complicated, but, it was argued, by letting the machine carry a larger share of the burden, life would become easier for them. The team know in the meantime that the choice of an interface is not a division of (a fixed amount of) labour, because the work involved in co-operating and communicating across the interface has to be added.