The thing is, programming languages aren't natural languages. With a natural language, there is an assumption of knowledge and comprehension in the listener. With a programming language, there is no such assumption. That's why programming languages are so structured.

To give a very simplistic example, English is a SVO language - the standard sentence is SVO, or Subject-Verb-Object. "The cat sits on the rug." Other languages, however, are different. German is SOV, as are many Latin texts.

This may be my small, caffeine-deprived brain speaking, but I cannot imagine any computer that is able to understand English being able to understand "Strong in the Force he is". (Yoda spoke in OSV.) Or, "He strong in the force is", which is SOV. Humans do it by associating a ridiculously huge amount of contextual information with every single word. (As a tangential subject, this is why the conditional in logic has many issues.)

In addition, computer languages need to be more precise than natural languages, primarily because we can tolerate a little more uncertainty than your average silicon-based lifeform. Can you imagine writing a program for a bank that says "While that amount over there is less than 7ish, get your job done." Yet, humans handle this kind of uncertainty quite nicely all the time.

Sorry bout the rambling ... Labor Day, while neat, sucks on Tuesday.

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Vote paco for President!

In reply to Perl isn't a natural language, though... by dragonchild
in thread A somewhat whimsical meditation on teaching Perl by premchai21

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