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Dijkstra's 1978 critique of natural language programming resurfaces

Original: The foolishness of "natural language programming" (1978)

Edsger W. Dijkstra's 1978 essay arguing against the idea of programming in natural language is drawing renewed attention. In the piece, Dijkstra contends that natural language's ambiguity is a liability, not a convenience, for specifying programs, and that the push to make programming resemble ordinary speech misunderstands the discipline. Readers are debating whether his arguments still hold as AI-powered code generation from plain English prompts becomes mainstream.

Why now: The essay's arguments are newly relevant as AI tools let people write code from natural language prompts.

Edsger W. DijkstraUniversity of Texas at Austin

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• The foolishness of "natural language programming" (1978) · xiaoyu2006 · 390

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