Re: machine translation

[Emil Sit <sit@MIT.EDU>]

> I  do sometimes communicate with my   colleagues in computer languages
> for fun.  We may write or even speak in computer languages, like this:
>
>         while (sleepy) {
>                 if (alarm_clock_rings) {
>                         switch_off(alarm_clock);
>                 }

While certainly syntactic C, I'm not convinced that your example is
any different from English. It feels like English to me
certainly. For me to consider something "speaking in C", I'd like
some variable declarations or procedure declarations, or even
a loop...

On a somewhat related note, people certainly use computer language
idioms in everyday communication. One common example would be:

#include <std-disclaimer.h>

in Usenet postings. Among many people I know, to say "food-p" or
to write "(food-p)" is a query as to whether anyone is hungry. (i.e.
we evaluate to #t if so.)

As another side comment, if this list were moderated and I were
moderating, I'd probably stop letting through messages on this thread
at this point. :)

--
Emil Sit / Bronx Science '95, MIT '99 -- ESG, SIPB, Athena Consulting
PGP KeyID: 0xE63561E9 / Fingerprint: A68FD0693EDABA19 2671EC1F22498F58