Re:On the foolishness of “natural language programming” (1979)
by simonh on Saturday September 19, 2020 @07:47PM
(#24531034)
I think you’re mischaracterising his argument. His problem isn’t with further layers of abstraction, it’s with people complaining that those layers of abstraction still need to be strictly and unambiguously defined.
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Re:On the foolishness of “natural language programming” (1979)
by ebg13 on Saturday September 19, 2020 @07:59PM
(#24531077)
Except that the higher up you get with your needs, regular person needs, where instead of constructing universes from subatomic particles you place pre-fab buildings, the less ambiguity matters. If I want, say, a window that adheres to the standards of the system and don't want to fuck about with fiddly shit that only programmers care about, the amount of acceptable ambiguity in the directive should be much higher.
Because, for one thing, if my cognitive requirement is transformed from a thousand directives to one higher order directive, I suddenly have energy and time for clarifying dialogue and exploration of presented options.
Like...right now I can google "email program" and be recommended an email program to download where I just click a button and suddenly I have a new email program installed. And that's even with google trying to organize literally everything being said online and being constantly bombarded by blogspammers and other malicious actors. It should not be horrifying to anyone to desire being able to program computers that way too.