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0 points9rx1y ago0 comments

> complex applications can be fully specified in English

Of course. We established that at the beginning. The entire discussion is about exactly that. It was confirmed again in the previous comment. However, that is not natural. I expect most native English speakers would be entirely incapable of fully specifying a complex application or anything else of similar complexity. That is not natural use.

While the words, basic syntax, etc. may mirror that found in natural language, a specification is really a language of its own. It is nothing like the language you will find people speaking at the bar or when writing pointless comments on Reddit. And that's because it is a programming language.

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kmoser1y ago

> I expect most native English speakers would be entirely incapable of fully specifying a complex application or anything else of similar complexity.

Your original postulation was that it simply wasn't possible, implying nobody could do it. The fact that most native English speakers wouldn't be able to do it doesn't mean nobody can do it.

I agree that most native English speakers wouldn't be able to write a reasonably complete spec in any type of language, not just because they lack the language skill, but because they simply wouldn't have the imagination and knowledge of what to create to begin with, let alone how to express it.

9rxOP1y ago

> Your original postulation was that it simply wasn't possible, implying nobody could do it.

Then you must have mistakenly replied to the wrong comment, I guess? My original comment, and every one that followed, postulated that so-called "careful use of English", as in what you are talking about and what we have always been talking about, is a programming language. Given that it is a programming language, how could it not be used in that way? That's what programming languages do best.

> The fact that most native English speakers wouldn't be able to do it doesn't mean nobody can do it.

Of course. But the fact that most native English speakers wouldn't be able to do it proves that it is isn't natural language. This "technical English" language may resemble the natural language also known as English in many ways, but, as even you pointed out earlier, it is not the same language.

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