News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Programming languages are not languages (2018) by empath75 on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @04:57PM (#22871356)
Small children learn two languages all the time. Try to teach Haskell to a five year old.
Re:Programming languages are not languages (2018) by filleduchaos on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @05:25PM (#22871652)
The ability of the infant brain to pick up as many languages as surround it is a testament to its incredible plasticity, not an indicator that it's "easy".

If you doubt that, good luck becoming even halfway productive[0] with a second natural language as an adult in anything close to the amount of time it takes to become productive with a second programming language.

0. Productive, while a fairly weird word choice, can here be taken to mean "able to consistently engage in and with non-trivial communication" the way that productive in a programming language can be taken to mean the same for non-trivial features and tasks.

Re:Programming languages are not languages (2018) by JadeNB on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @05:19PM (#22871586)
https://justtesting.org/post/70871612766/lets-program

Small children learn two languages because they're surrounded by people speaking two languages. Children's brains are highly plastic; if they were immersed in people speaking code language as they speak natural language constantly, then they would learn that, too.

Re:Programming languages are not languages (2018) by dtech on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @05:58PM (#22872016)
If people exclusively communicated with the child in Haskell (and maybe Java or something else) the child would become amazing at it just as fast.
Re:Programming languages are not languages (2018) by empath75 on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @06:15PM (#22872151)
I don’t think that’s the case. There’s a whole tower of concepts that need to be learned before one can learn how to use a programming language.
Re:Programming languages are not languages (2018) by type0 on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @06:07PM (#22872086)
but that would be child abuse
Re:Programming languages are not languages (2018) by hutzlibu on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @06:39PM (#22872352)
I sadly do not remember the name, but there was a teacher/philosopher around 1900, who tried to teach his pupils the natural language in a math defined way. (and wrote books about the concept). His intentions were good, but he was not liked so much and he ultimately had to accept the impossibility of it...