My main comment about this reading assignment is about the comparison that the author does in the beginning between the regular spoken languages on Earth and the programming languages we use.
What interests me the most about that comparison is that in the beginning I realized that I didn't really ever comprehend what the word language really entails.
I started thinking about what regular languages are: a tool of comunication. Comunication between humans. How are programming languages _languages_ then?
I think that they'd be comunicating humans and machines.
As I compared them I wondered about the most basic underlying structure of most human languages: the notions of verbs and nouns. I thought about what that structure is for programming languages. I think it is the nature of the machine instructions they encode: the actions of the r/w head over the infinite tape.
I guess I could say that I tried to understand the languages part of programming languages.
What interests me the most about that comparison is that in the beginning I realized that I didn't really ever comprehend what the word language really entails.
I started thinking about what regular languages are: a tool of comunication. Comunication between humans. How are programming languages _languages_ then?
I think that they'd be comunicating humans and machines.
As I compared them I wondered about the most basic underlying structure of most human languages: the notions of verbs and nouns. I thought about what that structure is for programming languages. I think it is the nature of the machine instructions they encode: the actions of the r/w head over the infinite tape.
I guess I could say that I tried to understand the languages part of programming languages.