The foolishness of "natural language programming" (1978)

Dijkstra argues that natural language programming is fundamentally misguided because it assumes that using formal symbolism is the primary source of programming difficulty. He contends that while natural language would shift burden to the machine, experience shows that changing communication interfaces often increases work on both sides rather than simplifying it, making narrow, formal interfaces preferable. Rather than eliminating the need for care and accuracy in programming, natural language would merely obscure where precision is actually required.