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cortesoftyesterday at 5:03 AM4 repliesview on HN

> 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?


Replies

matthewbaueryesterday at 5:23 AM

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.

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skydhashyesterday at 6:10 AM

> 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.

geonyesterday at 7:46 AM

No. Natural language is vague, ambiguous and indirect.

Watch these poor children struggle with writing instructions for making a sandwich:

https://youtu.be/FN2RM-CHkuI

lpnam0201yesterday at 5:26 AM

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

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