Is there a human readable programming language? [closed]

Answer 1

Applescript:

tell application "Finder"
 set the percent_free to ¬
 (((the free space of the startup disk) / (the capacity of the startup disk)) * 100) div 1
end tell
if the percent_free is less than 10 then
 tell application (path to frontmost application as text)
 display dialog "The startup disk has only " & the percent_free & ¬
 " percent of its capacity available." & return & return & ¬
 "Should this script continue?" with icon 1
 end tell
end if

Answer 2

All languages are 'human readable'. :) How else would someone be able to create it? That being said, languages that support DSLs can be incredibly intuitive such as Boo.

Answer 3

COBOL is a lot like that.

SET MYVAR TO 10.
EXECUTE MYMETHOD with 10, MYVAR.

Another sample from Wikipedia:

ADD YEARS TO AGE.
MULTIPLY PRICE BY QUANTITY GIVING COST.
SUBTRACT DISCOUNT FROM COST GIVING FINAL-COST.

Oddly enough though, despite its design to be readable as English, most programmers completely undermined this with bizarre naming conventions:

SET VAR_00_MYVAR_PIC99 TO 10.
EXECUTE PROC_10_MYMETHOD with 10, VAR_00_MYVAR_PIC99.

Answer 4

By creating a set of rules, it is possible to do logic programming in Prolog like this. You can build a grammar (or download one) for a particular domain, create a knowledge base and then query it. After defining your grammar you could do something like:

bob is a parent of tim.
mary is a parent of bob.

?- X is a grandparent of tim.
X = mary

?- jim is a parent of bob.
false

Answer 5

I can read C. That means it's human-readable(because I'm a human). It's just too terse for the average person. The general concept of programming languages is to maximize the information about how the computer should operate in a given line.

This is why Ruby is so popular; it maximizes the functionality in minimal text. English(or any other other natural language) is a pretty imprecise, low-information/character language.

In sum, it is: (i)done before and (ii)a known weaker idea.

Answer 6

Being more human-readable than most was one of the early selling points of Ada. I find it a silly argument these days, as any sufficently complex task in any language is going to require a competent practicioner to understand. However, it does beat the bejeezus out of C-syntax languages. Its dominant coding styles can enhance this effect too. For example, comparing loops in an if statement: Ada:

if Time_To_Loop then
   for i in Some_Array loop
      Some_Array(i) := i;
   end loop;
end if;

C:

if (timeToLoop != 0) {
   for (int i=0;i<SOME_ARRAY_LENGTH;i++) {
      someArray[i] = i;
   }
}

The C code would look even worse if I used Hungarian notation like Microsoft, but I'm trying to be nice. :-)