> "Go to the store. Get some healthy food. Come back home by 1:00 for
> Jim's call. Waste some time on a stupid topic. Call Jim back if he
> doesn't call by 2:00." Write that up for me in any language you want
> that you think is more terse and I'll sign up for it.
Easy:
gotoStore ();
getHealthyFood ();
waitTillTime ([1:00 in whatever time format]);
getBack ();
while (time < [1:00 in whatever time format]) {
if (!jimCalls) {
wasteTime ();
}
}
callJim ();
This isn't really more terse, but not really more verbose, either.
What I want to say is that I think the real problem isn't with the syntax but
with the fact that people tend to understand commands that are way
underdetermined just by "parsing" the context of their uttering.
In this case, You don't need to tell the person you are talking to what it
means to go to the store, because he learned the general concept of "going to a
store" earlier in his life and can (hopefully) deduce what store to go to from
the context of the conversation.
With a program, you don't have the benefit of being able to rely on that much
information being present beforehand and therefore have to be way more verbose
in describing what you want it to do.
For what it's worth, I'm all for developing systems that are able to "get" what
the user wants them to do by deducing lots of stuff from some context
semi-intelligently, but until those are developed, I think it's best not to
pretend that you can "talk" to a computer by making the programming language
similar to "real" languages. IMO, this just makes it seem like you don't have
to learn a new language when really, you have to.
cheers,
till
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