Notices by John Schrag (jvschrag@hachyderm.io)

@mnl My undergraduate degree is in Linguistics and computer science. (Double major). I think you are correct — programming languages are there to make things easier for humans to read and share code. Natural human languages are unsuitable for programming use because they are by nature ambiguous. This is a feature and not a bug in human-human communication. (Some linguists argue that all human cognition derives from scaffolded metaphors).

@mnl The idea is that our language is based on really concrete ideas -- our bodies, how they move, the space around us, etc -- used as metaphors to communicate more abstract ideas, which are then used to make more, eventually filling out an entire language.

The book I read was "Metaphors We Live By" by Lakoff and Johnson. (I had used some of Lakoff's textbooks in university linguistics). I think the book made its argument very well, but it was very dry to read. (Interesting, but not fun)