23 Nov
2011
23 Nov
'11
3:41 p.m.
On 23 Nov 2011 at 22:25, Rich Alderson wrote:
From: Charlie Carothers
Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2011 11:18 PM
It won't happen. COBOL was one of the earliest "natural language"
HLLs. While
"ADD 1 TO ITERATION-COUNT" or even
"INSPECT INPUT-STRING REPLACING CHARACTERS BY "X" BEFORE INITIAL
SPACE."
is clear enough, it doesn't give the high level view of what's being
done--and how it's being done--and most important, why.
There were many other attempts at "natural" language programming; all
failed ultimately.
--Chuck
Maybe what software development really needs is a
language where the
comments *are* the code?
...and we come full circle.
*That* was Knuth's point in creating Literate Programming.