[tiger10guy]

The ideas that I, as a programmer in the traditional sense, want to communicate to computers are not the ideas I want to communicate to humans.

I might ask my friend to move the report he's working on to a shared network location so I can load it into my computer and read it: "Hey Joe, can you move the report to the share?"

Joe might ask the computer to do the same thing: "cp /home/joe/reports/cool_report.pdf /network/share/reports/cool_report.pdf"

The actual ideas that are communicated are very similar, but not the same. English is good for communicating one idea while bash/GNU is good for communicating the other.

Just because English has some established formalism doesn't mean it's good at communicating the ideas we want to communicate to computers.

BTW, I don't care which field you put the issue under; it's the same issue and anyone who cares about it might contribute to the discussion.

[autokad]

you very solidly supported the argument you are against.

"Hey Joe, can you move the report to the share?"

is a great way to communicate something you want done. it doesnt matter if its to a computer, a person, or a dog. If it can't operate on those bounds then its not sophisticated enough to actually meet the needs of the user. One day computers will get there, they haven't done so not because its a 'bad way to talk to a computer' but because computers have not yet become that sophisticated.