So, when I say language I don't mean any possible way of conveying information, but I'm referring specifically to human languages, the things with nouns and verbs and grammar, like American Sign Language or Esperanto or French, that you can translate Hamlet into. There are many ways of conveying information that are not languages. For example, you can convey general emotions with smiley or frowny faces, or you can show how to put furniture together with pictures of the IKEA Man, but those are not languages in the sense that Swahili is a language. Similarly, you can't translate Hamlet into Python or SQL or Javascript. At best you can make a humorous parody that would be funny to someone who was already familiar with Hamlet but would be meaningless to someone who knew the programming language but didn't know Hamlet.Le Baron wrote:Yes, I've used them. Though I'm no 'programming expert'. The notion of 'human-readable shorthand' for interfacing with a computer tells me that it actually is a language, since if you use this written shorthand to make requests and the receiver deciphers, understands and carries out the instruction, you have communicated with it. The moving of 1s and 0s to accomplish the task is of little importance because it's something aside from the act of communicating requests (and getting feedback).
Just like if you ask a man to make you a sandwich, if he understands you, then language has succeeded. How he goes about the task is something else.
How would you ask someone to make you a sandwich in a programming language of your choice, in a way that would actually run and that a typical computer would understand? Or for that matter, how would you translate Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into a programming language of your choice?