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Comment by WoodenChair

19 days ago

PureScript is a programming language. English is not. A better analogy would be what would you say about someone who uses a No Code solution that behind the scenes writes Java. I would say that's a much better analogy. NoCode -> Java is similar to LLM -> Java.

I'm not debating whether LLMs are amazing tools or whether they change programming. Clearly both are true. I'm debating whether people are using accurate analogies.

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WoodenChair

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cortesoft  19 days ago

> PureScript is a programming language. English is not.

Why can’t English be a programming language? You would absolutely be able to describe a program in English well enough that it would unambiguously be able to instruct a person on the exact program to write. If it can do that, why couldn’t it be used to tell a computer exactly what program to write?

  • skydhash  19 days ago

    > Why can’t English be a programming language? You would absolutely be able to describe a program in English well enough that it would unambiguously be able to instruct a person on the exact program to write

    Various attempt has been made. We got Cobol, Basic, SQL,… Programming language needs to be formal and English is not that.

  • matthewbauer  19 days ago

    I don’t think you can do that. Or at least if you could, it would be an unintelligible version of English that would not seem much different from a programming language.

    • davnicwil  19 days ago

      I agree with your conclusion but I don't think it'd necessarily be unintelligible. I think you can describe a program unambiguously using everyday natural language, it'd just be tediously inefficient to interpret.

      To make it sensible you'd end up standardising the way you say things: words, order, etc and probably add punctuation and formatting conventions to make it easier to read.

      By then you're basically just at a verbose programming language, and the last step to an actual programming language is just dropping a few filler words here and there to make it more concise while preserving the meaning.

      2 replies →

    • cortesoft  19 days ago

      I don't think it would be unintelligible.

      It would be very verbose, yes, but not unintelligible.

    • valenterry  19 days ago

      Why not?

      Here's a very simple algorithm: you tell the other person (in English) literally what key they have to press next. So you can easily have them write all the java code you want in a deterministic and reproducible way.

      And yes, maybe that doesn't seem much different from a programming language which... is the point no? But it's still natural English.

  • lpnam0201  19 days ago

    English can be ambiguous. Programming languages like C or Java cannot

    • cortesoft  19 days ago

      English CAN be ambiguous, but it doesn't have to be.

      Think about it. Human beings are able to work out ambiguity when it arrises between people with enough time and dedication, and how do they do it? They use English (or another equivalent human language). With enough back and forth, clarifying questions, or enough specificity in the words you choose, you can resolve any ambiguity.

      Or, think about it this way. In order for the ambiguity to be a problem, there would have to exist an ambiguity that could not be removed with more English words. Can you think of any example of ambiguous language, where you are unable to describe and eliminate the ambiguity only using English words?

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