Comment by yusina

For natural language you are right. The language came first, the grammar was retrofitted to try to find structure.

For formal languages, which programming languages (and related ones like query languages, markup languages, etc) are an instance of, the grammar defines the language. It come first, examples second.

Historically, computers were very good at formal languages. With LLMs we are entering a new age where machines are becoming terrible at something they once excelled at.

Have you lately tried asking Google whether it's 2025? The very first data keeping machines (clocks) were also pretty unreliable at that. Full circle I guess.