Which is why I compared to legalese rather than arbitrary natural-language.
My argument would be that legalese with its strict "May" "Should"s and all that could be sufficiently similar to a (verbose) programming language.
Anecdotally, I certainly have entered "debugging" mode when trying to check if a specific clause of a contract was applicable to my situation before, rather than trying to interpret it liberally.
Of course, anecdote, and only demonstrates that the (my) brain _can_ operate "programmingly" when reading legalese, not that it does so "naturally".
My argument would be that legalese with its strict "May" "Should"s and all that could be sufficiently similar to a (verbose) programming language.
Anecdotally, I certainly have entered "debugging" mode when trying to check if a specific clause of a contract was applicable to my situation before, rather than trying to interpret it liberally.
Of course, anecdote, and only demonstrates that the (my) brain _can_ operate "programmingly" when reading legalese, not that it does so "naturally".