On Jul 18, 2011, at 6:50 PM, David Barbour <[email protected]> wrote:
> It would be nice if more programming languages were formal. Quite a few make > us play 'guess the semantics'. Personally I feel the exact opposite way. I wish programming was less formal and ridgid. Real progress would be made when an ordinary individual with a reasonable grasp of their native tongue could roughly describe their requirements and the computer could deduce the proper implementation via a process of successive revision and interrogation. While some level of formalism will be useful when discussing the behavior and specification of this system, it should not be a prerequisite for use. Most of the problems with existing programming practice, I would contend, stems from an insufficient appreciation of spoken words. I had the misfortune of breaking my wrist this winter while working on a tight deadline. I had to dictate not only several thousand lines of code, but the tests, debugger commands, and system commands and configs. It is a painful experience even with a competent peer as your hands. Until we break the program free from its representation, we will not have tools sufficient to the task. _______________________________________________ fonc mailing list [email protected] http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
