The topic itself is a provocation, there is no need for additional wars (of course I could state, for example, that every other program is written in Forth, only it wouldn't be true.)

The most human programming language is obviously Intercal. It's probably the only language where PLEASE is a keyword. Can't get any more human than that.

1 members found this post helpful.

I just came across this Wikipedia article...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natura...ge_programming

"Alexa, make me a website"

1 members found this post helpful.

Shouldn't that be ... "Alexa, make me a website secure from Amazon snooping" ?.

Maybe the gordian knot for the millennials

Most human readable or most similar to natural language?

I believe the former is not a property of a programming language, rather a skill of a programmer. I have read incomprehensible English (well, strings of English words). I've also read well written, easily understood Perl, which is often cited as a write only language.

Modern C++ (C++11/14/17/20/23) is easy to learn and use.

One thing that is tricky is that I think anyone with programming experience, myself included, is going to have a lot of bias. From my own experience of seeing non-programmers learning to program, there is no doubt that they got on with Python very quickly. Of course, once you learn the syntax of any language, it becomes much the same. I do like Python as a way of showing non-programmers how easy it is - showing them C++, Java, they turn off very quickly. You have to bear in mind that some people do not want to know the ins and outs of writing software, but want to be able to code some logic to solve a problem - Python is that language - I even use it myself to perform simple tasks when I don't want to write an application. I made a fairly juicy RPG name generator and a Christmas present assigning script for my family and strange things like that - it is like a tool that quickly works and anyone can write it.

People seem to hate Python and I understand if you are a programmer, but it definitely has a place and I use it regularly, even though I know C++, Java, C#, PHP and a whole lot of other languages. I am no longer a programmer (professionally), so actually that has drawn me to Python which has a serious convenience factor - I can dabble and I am not interested anymore in writing applications (done that plenty in the past).

1 members found this post helpful.

Python is widely considered to be one of the most user-friendly and easily readable programming languages available today. It's syntax is simple and straightforward, making it easier for beginners to learn and experienced developers to understand quickly. Additionally, Python has a large library of modules that can be used for various tasks such as data analysis, web development, machine learning, etc.

1 members found this post helpful.

That's very true, especially when list comprehensions and lamdba functions are used.

2 members found this post helpful.

In the beginning computers were programmed in machine language. Programmers soon invented assembler which has a one to one correspondence between alphanumeric text and machine code. Then macros were invented to speed up writing programs by generating streams of common code sequences. Programmers began creating macro libraries with an eye to being able to write entire programs in macros without having to intersperse assembler code. These "languages" were called two pass compilers. They first expanded the macros and then passed the result to the assembler.

During the mid 1950s there was a committee of prominent programmers which wanted to design a modern compiler for a modern program language. One of the problems they wanted to solve was being able to write code that could be understood by accountants and auditors. As it turned out accountants and auditors developed ways to certify the computerized books without having to read program code. But the programming committee inflicted two long lasting irritations on the computer world. They developed COBOL with one criteria being that COBOL must be readable by a programming illiterate. COBOL actually is readable but it doesn't make sense to a computer illiterate. In its original form writing COBOL gave programmers writers cramp.

The other thing that the committee mandated is that in addition to binary and floating point hardware must also support base 10 arithmetic so that an auditor or accountant could read a core dump or file dump. This resulted in cpus, memory, and peripherals designed to support awkward and error prone base ten machine instructions.

COBOL is the most human readable language ever created. It has never been surpassed because since then programmers who have designed new languages have definitely trended to make program languages less human readable and more programmer convenient.

1 members found this post helpful.

(This thread was originally from 2015.)

I used 'Basic' back in the '80s on my TRS80 Color 'Computer'. It taught me how to understand the basics of how the computer program operates. Didn't make me a programmer in anything more advanced than Basic but I always have a visual in my head when imagining a programs proceedures.

Humans read in so many different ways, such as left to right, or right to left, or up to down, and so on, such that, "human-readable" is so subjective, that one should, at least once, take a peek at the Rosetta Code, and find for oneself which languages are most readable.

1 members found this post helpful.