Re: Do you believe that the Plain English language is better than Ruby language?

What has any of this got to do with Ruby?

On Fri, 22 Feb 2019 at 23:44, Quantum Robin <[email protected]>
wrote:

>
>
> Em sex, 22 de fev de 2019 17:34, CRAIG JOHNSON <[email protected]> escreveu:
>
>> I've watched this....
>>
>> After doing this stuff for 45 years....this has been amusing, but
>> misguided....
>>
>> Without significant software (compiler/interpreter) overhead---nat
>> language is just a burden.
>>
>> Tragically---intent may be good, but experience and understanding of the
>> real issue of directing electrons about
>>    silicon traces seems to be shallow...
>>
>> Programming languages are build to do this right, everytime, clearly and
>> unambiguously---natural languages do not share that feature.
>>
>> thank you.
>>
>> next please.
>>
>> cj:)
>>
>
> What are the online resources for learning Plain English?
>
> What are the forums that are specifically for Plain English learners and Plain
> English programmers?
>
> Who are the people who write in Plain English?
>
>> On 2/21/2019 12:25 PM, Quantum Robin wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> Em qua, 20 de fev de 2019 13:33, Paul Robinson <[email protected]>
>> escreveu:
>>
>>> On 20 Feb 2019, at 14:35, Quantum Robin <[email protected]>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> > I asked to the Gerry Rzeppa, the Grand Negus of the Osmosian Order of
>>> Plain English Programmers:
>>>
>>>
>>> Ah, so your only contribution here, "Quantum Robin", is to conduct a
>>> flamewar by proxy? Can I ask that you please do not continue to do that?
>>>
>>>
>>> > What could possibly "make collaboration easier" than speaking to a
>>> fellow human in the shared natural language used for ordinary conversation?
>>>
>>>
>>> Based on the industry's experience of 70+ years: almost anything else,
>>> it turns out!
>>>
>>> Natural language is inherently loaded with misunderstanding and
>>> ambiguity (it's a feature, most humour, irony, poetry and cryptic crossword
>>> clues couldn't exist without them!), that results in potentially
>>> catastrophic errors in a software engineering context.
>>>
>>> This is why UML exists, even though we all wish it didn't. It's why
>>> automated test suites are an industry norm despite them being expensive to
>>> maintain. It's why good specification documents have tables and diagrams
>>> rather than stick to natural language, even though based on your argument,
>>> they are unnecessary.
>>>
>>> You seem to try and duck this problem in PE by demanding the programmer
>>> defines the language semantics first in order to narrow the scope of
>>> ambiguity.
>>>
>>> One problem with such an approach is that it would require a programmer
>>> to cognitively adjust when maintaining two programs written by two authors
>>> who have different meanings for the same word more so than they would in
>>> other languages.
>>>
>>> Sure, we have this in Ruby when it comes to class names being the same
>>> in two programs with different functionality within them, but this
>>> difference is explicit and clear, but for PE to remain truly "natural",
>>> such differences must be minimised and implicit. Anything less, and it's no
>>> longer a "natural language" approach, after all.
>>>
>>> "puts" might be an absurdly clunky shorthand for "Put on the screen" to
>>> your eyes, but at least it means exactly the same thing in every Ruby
>>> program I'm likely to ever have to pick up and maintain. Yet, 'Write
>>> "Hello" to the screen' in PE could mean different things if the author of
>>> the PE system I find myself in has changed the meaning of 'Write' or
>>> 'screen' in a way I had not anticipated.
>>>
>>> You don't seem to have perceived or encountered such problems yet, and I
>>> am going to guess that this might be because the only people to have
>>> produced and maintained a significant amount of code in your language seem
>>> to be you and your son.
>>>
>>> Take this into an enterprise code shop and see what they do with it, and
>>> you might learn a lot about human nature and problems with the language
>>> similar to the ones I have described.
>>>
>>> What I fear is that PE will fail the "maintainable at team scale" test
>>> rather quickly, and worse given the tone of your reply you will find fault
>>> in the team rather than in your language.
>>>
>>> Ironically for a language that seems to be borne out of a desire for
>>> empathy with the programmer, you may have designed an environment that is -
>>> completely unintentionally - passively hostile to them.
>>>
>>>
>>> > First, we don't "use a subset of English." Rather, we allow the
>>> programmer to precisely yet flexibly define whatever subset of English he
>>> deems suitable for his application and circumstances.
>>>
>>>
>>> Your rebuttal reduces to "we don't use a subset of English, we make the
>>> programmer define a subset of English".
>>>
>>> You haven't disproved my point, you've just made the whole idea even
>>> less attractive.
>>>
>>> What you've described is what we call in Ruby "meta programming" and
>>> those of us who are a certain age spend a lot of time asking colleagues to
>>> avoid it.
>>>
>>>
>>> > Except for Plain English, of course, which has the absolute minimum
>>> "cognition overhead"
>>>
>>>
>>> Based on your explanations and the source code that I have read, I do
>>> not believe this statement to be true beyond the point where a word is
>>> parsed at the surface level. Semantic and syntactic cognition seems to be
>>> harder in PE than any other programming language I know because as you've
>>> explained it, every word is defined differently in every program.
>>>
>>>
>>> > Short answer: Paul does not know Plain English, so he doesn't know
>>> what he is talking about.
>>>
>>>
>>> Indeed, my short answer to this response could - if I was going to be as
>>> equally insulting and flippant - be something like: Gerry does not know
>>> professional software engineering, so he doesn't know what he is talking
>>> about.
>>>
>>> Time to move on...
>>>
>>> Paul
>>
>>
>> Is Plain English a good programming language to teach basic programming
>> techniques?
>>
>> If not, why the Plain English is not a good programming language to teach
>> basic programming techniques?
>>
>>
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>> --
>> If you can't set a good example,
>>    be a glaring warning.
>> or...
>> “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.”
>> General James Mattis, USMC
>>
>>
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