This is my very first question so I am a bit nervous about it because I am not sure whether I get the meaning across well enough. Anyhow, here we go….
Whenever new milestones in programming have been reached it seems they always have had one goal in common: to make it easier for programmers, well, to program.
Machine language, opcodes/mnemonics, procedures/functions, structs, classes (OOP) etc. always helped, in their time, to plan, structure and code programs in a more natural, understandable and better maintainable way.
Of course functional programming is by no means a novelty but it seems that it has experienced a sort of renaissance in recent years. I also believe that FP will get an enormous boost when Microsoft will add F# to their mainstream programming languages.
Returning to my original question, I believe that ultimately programming will be done in a natural language (English) with very few restrictions or rules. The compiler will be part of an AI/NLP system that extracts information from the code or should I say text and transforms it into an intermediate language which the compiler can compile.
So, does FP take programming closer to natural-language programming or is it rather an obstacle and mainstream OOP will lead us faster to natural-language programming?
This question should not be used to discuss the useability or feasability of natural-language programming because only the future will tell.
Sorry, I don’t agree at all. Code is ultimately a blueprint for making things (objects), so it has to be very precise and rule-governed in order to function reliably. Natural language won’t take over programming any sooner than sketching ideas on napkins will take over mechanical engineering.