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E.W.Dijkstra: On the foolishness of "natural language programming"

cs.utexas.edu

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Re: E.W.Dijkstra: On the foolishness of "natural language programming"

#21

Post by timelinex »

I think alot of people have the paradigm wrong. I think people conceive Natural Language Programming as a simply change in syntax, which in it self would complicate stuff.

But if you take the stance that we as humans are Natural Language Programmers, the concept becomes easier to understand.

You can think of your boss at your software development firm as your programmer. He wants some job done and you program some approximation of what he wants done, then you modify based on his inputs. It is a similar thing with Natural Language Programming, your boss didn't use complex symbols to get what he wants done and didn't have to sit with you all the way through to get something done.

For me, it is not a question of whether this makes programming simply but whether we can build a machine with the same capacity as a human.

Re: E.W.Dijkstra: On the foolishness of "natural language programming"

#22

Post by lemming »

some people found error messages they couldn't ignore more annoying than wrong results, and, when judging the relative merits of programming languages, some still seem to equate "the ease of programming" with the ease of making undetected mistakes

This is interesting, I think - this is really one of the core parts of the argument between static and dynamic typing. I prefer bondage and discipline to free love when it comes to types - I find programming in dynamic languages mushy, ill defined and error prone. And yet, lots of people love them and manage to do amazing things with them. Although in general I agree with Dijkstra's essay, maybe there is more wiggle room for a "more natural" language than I'd thought.

Re: E.W.Dijkstra: On the foolishness of "natural language programming"

#23

Post by tankenmate »

timelinex wrote: post #21

I think alot of people have the paradigm wrong. I think people conceive Natural Language Programming as a simply change in syntax, which in it self would complicate stuff. But if you take the stance that we as humans are Natural Language Programmers, the concept becomes easier to understand. You can think of your boss at your software development firm as your programmer. He wants some job done and you program some ap…

The problem here is that there is 20+ years of acquired "state" that allows this to happen. Also, think of the hiring process, weeding out potential programmers with "bad" "state"; i.e. they are crap programmers.

If you want a machine with the same capacity as a human you had better have something that can learn at the same rate as a human, and then add 20 years of "life experiences" and education. Then.. _maybe_ you might have a good programmer.

Sorry to rain on your parade, but us meat sacks are better at doing that, evolution has stumbled upon some pretty cool hacks that make it cheap enough (think of a 20 year computer maintenance and energy bill!) to have a "sentient" being.

Re: E.W.Dijkstra: On the foolishness of "natural language programming"

#24

Post by ajb »

edwtjo wrote: post #5

I was thinking about lojban ( http://lojban.org ) when I read this. I mean we do have programming languages, which are unambiguous. Why should we not alter our "natural", i.e. legacy based, communication when dealing with computers?

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_natural_language

Re: E.W.Dijkstra: On the foolishness of "natural language programming"

#25

Post by timelinex »

tankenmate wrote: post #23
timelinex wrote: post #21

I think alot of people have the paradigm wrong. I think people conceive Natural Language Programming as a simply change in syntax, which in it self would complicate stuff. But if you take the stance that we as humans are Natural Language Programmers, the concept becomes easier to understand. You can think of your boss at your software development firm as your programmer. He wants some job done and you program some ap…

The problem here is that there is 20+ years of acquired "state" that allows this to happen. Also, think of the hiring process, weeding out potential programmers with "bad" "state"; i.e. they are crap programmers. If you want a machine with the same capacity as a human you had better have something that can learn at the same rate as a human, and then add 20 years of "life experiences" and education. Then.. _maybe_ you…

I don't want to get into the how. The how should be a very open question. Like there is a million and one ways to program something, so there are a million and one ways to create AI. Some implementations are more efficient than others. What you should be asking yourself is how do I make this more efficient than taking 20 years?

Re: E.W.Dijkstra: On the foolishness of "natural language programming"

#26

Post by G_Morgan »

timelinex wrote: post #21

I think alot of people have the paradigm wrong. I think people conceive Natural Language Programming as a simply change in syntax, which in it self would complicate stuff. But if you take the stance that we as humans are Natural Language Programmers, the concept becomes easier to understand. You can think of your boss at your software development firm as your programmer. He wants some job done and you program some ap…

The bosses instructions and confused and imprecise. The natural language dance in this scenario involves us repeatedly trying and failing and adding more communication until the various terms being used are precisely defined enough so that the software can be written.

This is what Dijkstra was talking about. That without a formal system we end up wasting a lot of time tightening up what we mean.

It may be an interesting field to see if we can make a computer do this dance but it isn't useful.

Re: E.W.Dijkstra: On the foolishness of "natural language programming"

#27

Post by timelinex »

G_Morgan wrote: post #26
timelinex wrote: post #21

I think alot of people have the paradigm wrong. I think people conceive Natural Language Programming as a simply change in syntax, which in it self would complicate stuff. But if you take the stance that we as humans are Natural Language Programmers, the concept becomes easier to understand. You can think of your boss at your software development firm as your programmer. He wants some job done and you program some ap…

The bosses instructions and confused and imprecise. The natural language dance in this scenario involves us repeatedly trying and failing and adding more communication until the various terms being used are precisely defined enough so that the software can be written. This is what Dijkstra was talking about. That without a formal system we end up wasting a lot of time tightening up what we mean. It may be an interest…

The current process is: Bosses tells you the programmer and then you instruct the computer precisely. With natural language programming, the boss just tells the computer. There is no you now. Why is this faster? Because you used to take 3 months to get the sofware done, our new system can do it in 3 seconds[the times are arbitary, the general assumption is that it's less than a human].

Of course you are going to still have to specify what you want with both NLP and a human. So this time is constant and it is not relevant when comparing the two system.

What I'm saying is that the NLP would be like a human but faster and less error prone.

Re: E.W.Dijkstra: On the foolishness of "natural language programming"

#28

Post by netcan »

timelinex wrote: post #27
G_Morgan wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bosses instructions and confused and imprecise. The natural language dance in this scenario involves us repeatedly trying and failing and adding more communication until the various terms being used are precisely defined enough so that the software can be written. This is what Dijkstra was talking about. That without a formal system we end up wasting a lot of time tightening up what we mean. It may be an interest…

The current process is: Bosses tells you the programmer and then you instruct the computer precisely. With natural language programming, the boss just tells the computer. There is no you now. Why is this faster? Because you used to take 3 months to get the sofware done, our new system can do it in 3 seconds[the times are arbitary, the general assumption is that it's less than a human]. Of course you are going to stil…

An interesting point is that programming a human computer is in itself an acquired skill.

A "boss" with years of experience instructing programmers will get better results than an amateur. Experience with the particular programmer also improves results. An important part of this is knowing what to specify and what to leave to the programmer.

Like you started off saying, looking at this as a way of making programming easier for people who can't currently program is probably wrong. It's possibly useful as something to paddle towards, but I suspect it isn't a genuine raison d'etre.

Re: E.W.Dijkstra: On the foolishness of "natural language programming"

#29

Post by Deestan »

hasenj wrote: post #18
Deestan wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just because you said "the only plaza" doesn't make it unambiguous. That was just me compressing it to fit somewhat into English. What it really would say is "the only plaza which fits the current context", as opposed to e.g. "the specific place called The Plaza" or "the only plaza in the universe". The specific Plaza change wasn't the intended point, though. The "to the left of X while standing at Y" as opposed to…

How exactly is that any different from "the plaza"? What's even "the current context"?

Again, the "plaza" part of the sentence is not relevant to the actual point I was making. I did not claim that specific change gave a huge boost in clarity.

> How exactly is that any different from "the plaza"?

It is different in that the ambiguity is explicit.

> What's even "the current context"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context : "Context is the surroundings, circumstances, environment, background, or settings which determine, specify, or clarify the meaning of an event." Example context: Me and the person who gives me directions commonly use that specific plaza as a reference point. Another possible context: Directions are related to my small town, which only has one proper plaza.

Re: E.W.Dijkstra: On the foolishness of "natural language programming"

#30

Post by edanm »

lemming wrote: post #22

some people found error messages they couldn't ignore more annoying than wrong results, and, when judging the relative merits of programming languages, some still seem to equate "the ease of programming" with the ease of making undetected mistakes This is interesting, I think - this is really one of the core parts of the argument between static and dynamic typing. I prefer bondage and discipline to free love when it…

That quote also stuck in my mind. I'm more of a dynamic-language type for most things, and his argument seems to go heavily against dynamic languages. By the way, I'd quote the sentence before as well since it adds important context.

It was a significant improvement that now many a silly mistake did result in an error message instead of in an erroneous answer. (And even this improvement wasn't universally appreciated: some people found error messages they couldn't ignore more annoying than wrong results, and, when judging the relative merits of programming languages, some still seem to equate "the ease of programming" with the ease of making undetected mistakes.)

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