Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!udel!burdvax!psuvax1!gondor.cs.psu.edu!schwartz
From: schwartz@gondor.cs.psu.edu (Scott Schwartz)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Universal Programming Languge (was: Universal OS)
Message-ID: <3558@psuvax1.psu.edu>
Date: 6 May 88 18:04:40 GMT
References: <769@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU> <76700017@uiucdcsp> <843@actnyc.UUCP> <1556@vaxb.calgary.UUCP> <764@l.cc.purdue.edu> <4658@ihlpf.ATT.COM>
Sender: netnews@psuvax1.psu.edu
Reply-To: schwartz@gondor.cs.psu.edu (Scott Schwartz)
Organization: Penn State University
Lines: 39

In article <4658@ihlpf.ATT.COM> nevin1@ihlpf.UUCP (00704a-Liber,N.J.) writes:
>In article <764@l.cc.purdue.edu> cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:

[ lots of stuff ]

My $0.02:

I'm not convinced that "mathematics" (whatever that is) would make 
anything like a decent programming language.  

First of all, assuming you agree that more is better in these things,
why not use English as you programming language?  The fact that nobody
can possibly write a translator from English to anything else today
is just a technical detail :-)  The point is that what Herman really
wants is a computer with natural language understanding that he can
talk to in his own way.  That being the case, I'm not holding my breath
waiting for him to finish designing this language.

Ok, so English is too hard, but "mathematics" is just notation right?
Easy for computers to deal with, right?  Wrong.  I'm not the best
mathematician in the world, but when I was getting my B.A. in it I was
taught that mathematics is written in English.  I think this is an
important issue.  Read any mathematical paper: The notation is there to
augmnent the English prose that the paper is written in.  To do justice
to the idea of a programming language that embodies all the power of
the mathematical notation we see so often is probably going to require the
English language as it's extention mechanism if you expect humans to
use it and get the same kinds of (good) results they get now.


Second, why the fascination with mathematics?  How about formal logic?
This should appeal in the same way that mathematical notation does,
and has the added advantage of being actually doable.  Prolog is 
a proof-of-concept of this idea.



Open to suggestions,
-- Scott Schwartz     schwartz@gondor.cs.psu.edu    schwartz@psuvaxg.bitnet