Comment by mikestorrent

From my dabbling with policy writing and legalese, English kinda _is_ a programming language, but one with ambiguity as a first class principal. Sometimes you would like to say something that seems normal at first blush, but gives you the latitude you need to mean something different at the time it is actually being evaluated in a situation that matters. Weasel words, for instance, serve a purpose even if we eschew them. The idea is that it is deliberately NOT formally declaring the exact meaning of something, nor the fact that it is not doing this. How could you really do that in code without calling attention to the very thing you're trying to obscure?