Re:We should revisit literate programming in the agent era
by palata on Tuesday March 10, 2026 @07:48AM
(#47321959)
Programming languages are non-ambiguous, in the sense that there is no doubt what will be executed. It's deterministic. If the program crashes, you can't say "no but this line was a joke, you should have ignored it". Your code was wrong, period.
Programming languages can be ambiguous too. The thing with formal languages is more that they put a stricter and narrower interpretation freedom as a convention where it's used. If anything there are a subset of human expression space. Sometime they are the best tool for the job. Sometime a metaphor is more apt. Sometime you need some humour. Sometime you better stay in ambiguity to play the game at its finest.