Dijkstra On the foolishness of "natural language programming"

People are sticking up for LLMs here and that's cool.

I wonder, what if you did the opposite? Take a project of moderate complexity and convert it from code back to natural language using your favorite LLM. Does it provide you with a reasonable description of the behavior and requirements encoded in the source code without losing enough detail to recreate the program? Do you find the resulting natural language description is easier to reason about?

I think there's a reason most of the vibe-coded applications we see people demonstrate are rather simple. There is a level of complexity and precision that is hard to manage. Sure, you can define it in plain english, but is the resulting description extensible, understandable, or more descriptive than a precise language? I think there is a reason why legalese is not plain English, and it goes beyond mere gatekeeping.

"Sure, you can define it in plain english, but is the resulting description extensible, understandable, or more descriptive than a precise language? I think there is a reason why legalese is not plain English, and it goes beyond mere gatekeeping."

Is this suggesting the reason for legalese is to make documents more "extensible, understable or descriptive" than if written in plain English.

What is this reason that the parent thinks legalese is used that "goes beyond gatekeeping".

Plain English can be every bit as precise as legalese.

It is also unclear that legalese exists for the purpose of gatekeeping. For example, it may be an artifact that survives based on familiarity and laziness.

Law students are taught to write in plain English.

https://www.law.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/2021-07/pla...

In some situations, e.g., drafting SEC filings, use of plain English is required by law.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/17/240.13a-20