The State of Natural Language Programming

gManZboy writes "Brad Meyers (and co) of the Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon have written an interesting paper about the state of natural language programming. They point out that well understood HCI principles aren't finding their way into relatively new languages like Java and C#."

Proposal

[Anonymous Coward]

If
Natural Language is not making its way into Programming
Then
Programming should make its way into Natural Language
Else
Continue

Doesn't seem to say much.

[BigZaphod]

The article seems like some kind of summary. Unless I missed something important, like, a second page or something. But basically, it seems to suggest that, even after all these years, we still aren't any closer to having a natural way to program. Huh.

Is it any wonder?

[Tackhead]

> They point out that well understood HCI principles aren't finding their way into relatively new languages like Java and C#."

Well, duh! That's because if, according to the article...

> The goal is to make it possible for people to express their ideas in the same way they think about them.

...most ideas just don't work that way.

#include // Do What I Mean

thingy main (thingy list) { Sort thingy
No, like this
With the guy's name on the right
No, I guess the middle initial deserves its own column. No, I didn't think of that.
But don't print the middle initial.
No, not like that.
Eew, that font sucks.
Yeah, like that.
No, like it was before.
Yeah, no--wait. I gotta talk to my boss.
He said to do it like this. // wave hands
But he didnt like it.
Fuck this, I'll pay some guy in India to do it.
}

Not gonna work

[JohnGrahamCumming]

Given the state of natural language on /. this isn't going to work :-)

John.

on a bumper sticker

[devphil]

YOU FORTH LOVE IF HONK THEN

And here's some filler text to compensate for /.'s sucktacular lameness filter. Blah blah blah. "It won't be any more frightening than the time I climbed up an elevator shaft with my teeth," said Sunny.

Re:Natural language programming.

[Moofie]

I don't think that anybody who spells their name like that gets to talk about "natural language".

(it's a joke, people!)

Tourette's: the natural language of programmers

[BrakesForElves]

Programmers sit serenely, silently coding for hours at a stretch.

Then they execute the code for the first time, see the results, and scream out SHEEEIIIIT, GODDAMN IT!!!

Hence, to an outside observer, the natural language of programmers is indistinguishable from a case of Tourette's Syndrome.

Perl version

[Black Perl]

$_ =
q[ for ( @_ ) { push @_, sort grep /\w+/, @_ } print unpack 'A*', pack 'B*', join '',
reverse map
{ length ( $_ ) >> 1 }
split /\S+/
];eval

Re:Applescript

[ampathee]

God that reminds me of the old "guess the command" puzzles in old text-adventures.

One of the wall panels sounds hollow.
> PUSH PANEL
You can't do that.
> TAP PANEL
You can't do that.
> PRESS PANEL
Nothing happens
. ..(much typing, and thesaurusing) ..
> CARESS PANEL
The panel slides open.

I hope NL Programming wouldn't be bringing back that sort of thing..