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#."

Comments

Proposal

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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.