| Thomas Gagne 2007-01-06, 7:29 pm |
| Eliot Miranda wrote:
> Thomas Gagne wrote:
>
> Thomas, sorry to so pedantically disagree but: <snip>
I guess I was thinking out-of-the-box Smalltalk, LISP, C++, Java, SQL,
C, Eiffel, etc. know little (if anything) about commercial finance,
insurance, forecasting, banking, payment processing, inventory
management, supply-chain logistics, billing, manufacturing control,
etc., which is the nature of 3GL languages.
An exception would be 4GLs and 5GLs, but I'm having trouble finding a
satisfactory description of either. The description I liked best came
from a book I can't remember the title too, which makes it difficult for
me to locate and quote. In fact, the best example of a 4-and-a-half-GL
may actually be the application program--which is loaded with semantic
knowledge and humans use them everyday to accomplish tasks.
In the meantime I can summarize. The author described 1GL as being
closest to the hardware and nGL as being closer to the _problem domain_
(and presumably the human). I believe the author made a point of saying
nGL was not to be natural language or natural language-like because
natural language is too ambiguous to be of much use by computers. This,
at least, is where "business" language (domain-specific, semantic) has
value over natural language. Business language has concrete terms that
with less effort than natural language can be given non-ambiguous
definitions.
5GLs, if we believe the paint-a-program vendors, are such because
they're graphically based and allow users to point-and-shoot their way
to icon-o-automation. Many anthropologists and linguists agree that as
pretty a product as that may be, hieroglyphics are a step backward in
communication. The vocabulary too nuanced and too broad, and symbols
are easily and frequently misinterpreted by humans.
Heck, look at the challenge we've had coming up with international
traffic signs that drivers and pedestrians can understand, and someone
wants to make a programming language out of it?
--
Visit <http://blogs.instreamfinancial.com/anything.php>
to read my rants on technology and the finance industry.
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