Comment by froh

I think the difference is between communicating to a purely mechanical being versus communicating to an intelligent entity: unlike programs, which are purely formal languages, we write textbooks and papers in a mix of human language and formal language. often we introduce "just formal enough" notations. and the intelligent reader will read in-between, inter legere literally means just that: reading in between. filling the gaps, connecting the dots.

and in practice I find it _very_ effective to express key ideas with some formal language where applicable. a little ebnf here, some snippets of python or prolog there or other languages there. and I find llms wonderful at filling in the dots and, and that's the topic here, to translate our semi formal conversation into rigorous, formal language.

and I dare one step further: I also find llms useful in formulating and refining technical proposals, for human peer review and llm driven implementation, and of course these proposals mix natural language prose with semi-formal and formal detail. think PEP-12 and PEP-1 style. and these then get work packages which each loop in a spec as in sdd.

seems to work just fine so far :-)