On the foolishness of “natural language programming” (1978)
IMO the argument is sound in one direction: the precision, structure, and unforgiving nature of programming languages is a feature rather than a bug. That said, I think this does not mean that there is no benefit to natural language interfaces to machines. I think he goes wrong here:<p>&gt; When all is said and told, the &quot;naturalness&quot; with which we use our native tongues boils down to the ease with which we can use them for making statements the nonsense of which is not obvious.<p>I would say that he leaves out a critical detail: the nonsense of which is not obvious _and also not important_.