I always find claims that any computer language is more like English than
another rather odd and, potentially misleading.
Computers are not human beings, and our "Western" society is in the unfortunate
grip of an extended metaphor that we (humans) are merely very sophisticated
computers, and computers will, one day, behave just like humans. This metaphor
is coming to be accepted, not as metaphor, but as some sort of fact.
But it is not a fact.
All computer languages are what they are; computer languages, and as such
cannot do anything but resemble human languages in a superficial fashion (for
starters, most human languages were not designed). To manipulated computers via
a computer language requires an odd sort of non-human logic which must be
learnt by any would-be programmer; and, while some languages attempt to obscure
that, without that nothing really effective gets done.
I don't think xTalk is like English; what I do know is that, in some ways it is
easier to achieve fairly spectacular results more rapidly than with a language
like PASCAL. But, under the hood, its the same thing.
sincerely, Richmond Mathewson
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"Philosophical problems are confusions arising owing to the fluidity of
meanings users attach to words and phrases."
Mathewson, 2006
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