Eric Amell
Sep 6, 2018 · 1 min read

Great article, very insightful!

Programing languages are mathematical by nature so wouldn’t likening them to natural languages be wrong? I would rather liken them to formal languages which is exactly what they are. When I think language more often than not I am thinking formal languages of which I see natural languages as just a subset. Of course you do have the caveat that the rules around natural languages are often complex and quite often violated (having exceptions to rules in a language is actually a rule in and of itself so that doesn’t count as a violation).

Different programming languages have different ways to mathematically represent the problem set. Does that influence the way we think about the problem set, absolutely. That however is not a bad thing. In the end we are trying to represent a problem set mathematically and in order to do that we have define the set of constraints within which we are going to define our problem and that is our programming language(s).

Is it our programming language that is limiting our ability to define the problem or is it that we are defining things that are not necessarily mathematical in nature within the constraints of mathematics? Couple the later with the truth that we have limits in our understanding and comprehension and I think we are step closer (to what I am not quite sure :)).

    Eric Amell

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