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Dijkstra On the foolishness of "natural language programming"

(www.cs.utexas.edu)
448 points nimbleplum40 | 1 comments | 4/3/2025, 3:30:00 AM | HN request time: 0.244s | source
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misja111 ◴[4/3/2025, 6:40:00 AM] No.43565639[source]▶

I somewhat disagree with this. In real life, say in some company, the inception of an idea for a new feature is made in the head of some business person. This person will not speak any formal language. So however you turn it, some translation from natural language to machine language will have to be done to implement the feature.

Typically the first step, translation from natural to formal language, will be done by business analysts and programmers. But why not try to let computers help along the way?

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1. chilldsgn ◴[4/3/2025, 6:53:00 AM] No.43565758[source]▶

I like your take.

The only issue I have with trusting a computer to do so much is that it doesn't necessarily have the long term vision or intuition some humans might have for the direction of the software product. There's so much nuance to the connection between a business need and getting it into software, or maybe I am overthinking it :D