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Metafor: Translating Natural Language to Code
vivin writes "Computer programming is second nature to most of the Slashdot crowd. However, this is not true for the vast majority of people. Formal programming languages are not as expressive or flexible as natural languages. This becomes more evident when we try to translate user requirements into actual code. Researchers at MIT have come up with a program that bridges this gap. It's not so much a tool that turns English into code, as it is a program that translates requirements (in English) to code. When Metafor analyzes English, nouns phrases become objects, verbs become functions, and adjectives become object attributes (or properties). In addition to helping programmers visualize their program better, I think it also promotes writing concise (and therefore) requirements and descriptions. Metafor doesn't handle run-on sentences (or bad English) that well." Update For for the dupe. Not going well. Appreciate all the hate mail. Really encourages improvement.
What they should also do is allow me click a picture and have it translate into code, or let me click an animated picture and have that translate into code. Say I want to create a backround for a video game, if I could just point and click my way through the interface creation then even I could be a game designer. So why not start with open source game design and develop tools to allow hobby programmers like me to make games for the masses, as a result you'd gain games for linux and finally Linux will be able to dominate. Or we can keep re-inventing the wheel and treating programming like a science when its really just an art. The fact that a computer science major has to learn calculus and all this math is the main reason I didnt major in computer science. When you treat something like a science instead of an art, you make it less attractive. In the end this is why we have a shortage of good programmers. The next group of programming geniuses might never become programmers because they can't handle the calculus, and guess what? 99% of programmers never use any of that useless math.