Saturday, September 20, 2014

On coding linguistics

This is an older post by Sarah Mei about the relationship between programming and human languages, and I still love it.

Not to boast, but I've been what they call "natural" when it came to picking up grammar and spelling rules in my native language. In fact, I seemed to have had an innate knowledge of grammar (frankly, it must have come from my love of reading). Learning a foreign language was also easy - I would see similarities in how to apply grammar rules. I liked languages - when I was little, I created my own language inspired by Tolkien's Hobbit. I created the alphabet (the letters looked like ancient hieroglyphs) and the grammar. My friend and I then used this language to write notes to each other, so that no one else could understand them. That was the first code I created.

When I was learning the basics of programming, drawing on linguistics concepts helped me tremendously. There is a structure, and a 'sentence' is formed by following a set of rules. Yes, a programming language has a much more rigid structure than a human language. But in a sense, I think it makes it easier because in simple terms, it is easier to follow one set of rules rather than 55 sets plus 155 exceptions.

Just a note for today. As I said, the article was great.

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