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From: utoddl@uncecs.edu (Todd M. Lewis)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: What is the language for ?
Message-ID: <1990Jul27.200302.7689@uncecs.edu>
Date: 27 Jul 90 20:03:02 GMT
References: <1990Jul25.174153.16896@ecn.purdue.edu> <11029@chaph.usc.edu> <1990Jul25.210639.20509@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> <2408@l.cc.purdue.edu> <5374@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: UNC Educational Computing Service
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I think there is a real tendency to confuse the notion of language
as a tool to communicate (like people talking) with the notion of
formal languages used to specify programs.  The former is really
a protocol while the second is instantiated as a statement.  The
remarkable (and useful) similarities of the two obscure their
differences.  Do you really want the computer to start second-guessing
your intentions based on its interpretation of the current operating
context?  To add more than the common safety checks ("Are you sure [y/N]?"
type messages) would require far more than a quantum leap in system
complexity--it would have to _understand_itself_ to be able to
_understand_ what you want it to do.  To really specify something
unambiguously, a sequence of commands--a program, is not easy at all.

Software isn't stupid because it "does not let users communicate their
needs".  The formal language that controls that software is either
inadequate in itself, or too alien to the user to allow efficient
control.  The common ways to approach the problem are (1) improve the
formal language so adequate commands are possible (this may involve
adding function to the software, but we aren't talking about that),
(2) alter the language so it more closely parallels the user's
normal way of communicating (the ever-popular "natural language
interface"), and last-but-by-no-means-least (3) alter the user
to more closely parallel the software's normal way of communicating.
This last one usually costs about $300 to $500 per day for several
days and involves traveling to the other coast.