Programming languages, natural languages, and mathematics

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Programming languages, natural languages, and mathematics

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Communications of the ACM archive
Volume 18 , Issue 12 (December 1975) table of contents

Pages: 676 - 683

Year of Publication: 1975

ISSN:0001-0782

Author

Peter Naur

Copenhagen Univ., Copenhagen, Denmark

Publisher

ACM New York, NY, USA

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Downloads (6 Weeks): 9, Downloads (12 Months): 50, Citation Count: 9

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abstract references cited by index terms collaborative colleagues

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ABSTRACT

Some social aspects of pro gramming are illuminated through analogies with similar aspects of mathematics and natural languages. The split between pure and applied mathematics is found similarly in programming. The development of natural languages toward flexionless, word-order based language types speaks for programming language design based on general, abstract constructs. By analogy with incidents of the history of artificial, auxiliary languages it is suggested that Fortran and Cobol will remain dominant for a long time to come. The most promising avenues for further work of wide influence are seen to be high quality program literature (i.e. programs) of general utility and studies of questions related to program style.

REFERENCES

Note: OCR errors may be found in this Reference List extracted from the full text article. ACM has opted to expose the complete List rather than only correct and linked references.

	1	Bodmer, F. (1944), with Hogben, L. (Ed.). The Loom of languages, George Allen and Unwin, London, 7th impr., 1961
	2	Buxtron, J.N., and Rendeell, B. (1969), Software Engineering Techniques. NATO Science Committee, Brussels, 1970.
	3	Caracciolo di Forino, A. {1968}. String processing languages and generalized Markov algorithms. In Symbol Manipulation Languages and Techniques, D. G. Bobrow (Ed.), North Holland Pub. Co., Amsterdam.
	4	Courant, R. {1961}. In Applied mathematics: what is needed in research and education--a symposium. SlAM Rev. 4, 4 (Oct. 1962), 297-320.
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	7	Hardy, G.H. A Mathematician's Apology. Cambridge U. Press, reprinted 1967. Partially reprinted in The World of Mathematics, J.R. Newman (Ed.), Simon and Schuster, New York, 1956, pp. 2027-2038.
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	17	Ralston, A. {1973}. The future of higher-level languages (in teaching). In International Computer Symposium 1973, A. Gunther, B. Levrat, and H. Lipps (Eds.), American Elsevier, New York, 1974, pp. 1-10.
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CITED BY 9

	Carolynn Van Dyke, Taking “computer literacy” literally, Communications of the ACM, v.30 n.5, p.366-374, May 1987
	Peter Naur, The European side of the last phase of the development of ALGOL 60, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, v.13 n.8, p.15-44, August 1978
	Stuart Shapiro, Splitting the Difference: The Historical Necessity of Synthesis in Software Engineering, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, v.19 n.1, p.20-54, January 1997
	Caroline M. Eastman, A comment on English neologisms and programming language keywords, Communications of the ACM, v.25 n.12, p.938-940, Dec 1982
	T. Ray Nanney, Computer science: An essential course for the liberal arts, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, v.8 n.3, p.102-105, July 1976
	Peter Naur, Computing versus human thinking, Communications of the ACM, v.50 n.1, p.85-94, January 2007
	Peter Naur, The European side of the last phase of the development of ALGOL 60, History of programming languages I, ACM Press, New York, NY, 1978
	Julius A. Archibald, Jr., A dynamic (FORTRAN) programming system, Proceedings of the June 7-10, 1976, national computer conference and exposition, June 07-10, 1976, New York, New York
	Boyko B. Bantchev, Putting more meaning in expressions, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, v.33 n.9, p.77-83, Sept. 1, 1998