[mkramlich]

Agreed. Take any of the modern mainstream languages like Java or Python, for example. If you were to describe them to a non-programmer who didn't know what a programming language was, or why it was needed, you might say something like, "Well, they look a little like English and they use some of the same words from English. But they have very precise meanings which are not exactly the same as in English, and you can put them together in ways which are different than English, and the reason why is to be much more precise and explicit and concise than what you could do in English. And because a programming language has nothing to do with emotions or conveying concepts but instead in purely carrying out a sequence of steps and manipulating and storing data. That's it." In other words, their designer's started with a natural human langauge, then left out the parts that were irrelevant to the computer, then zoomed-in on and enhanced the richness of the expression capabilities when it comes to certain other areas. They threw out the bathwater and made the baby bigger and better! In other words, they were designed starting with the premise (or perhaps it was a conclusion you reach along the way) that so-called natural language programming is pointless or inefficient, and so they want and made another kind of programming, which worked much better. Their requirement was to make a machine that propels itself under water. They knew they were going to call it a submarine. They realized early on there was no need to make that submarine "swim" like a human. They just added propellors and rudders, etc. Making a submarine "swim" was irrelevant. It just had to move through water.