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posted by chromas on Monday March 25 2019, @06:02AM   Printer-friendly
from the ^s([^\w\d\s])(?:.*?[^\\]\1){2} dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Is Computer Code a Foreign Language?

Maryland’s legislature is considering a bill to allow computer coding courses to fulfill the foreign language graduation requirement for high school. A similar bill passed the Florida State Senate in 2017 (but was ultimately rejected by the full Legislature), and a federal version proposed by Senators Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, and Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, is being considered in Congress.

The animating idea behind these bills is that computer coding has become a valuable skill. This is certainly true. But the proposal that foreign language learning can be replaced by computer coding knowledge is misguided: It stems from a widely held but mistaken belief that science and technology education should take precedence over subjects like English, history and foreign languages.

As a professor of languages and literatures, I am naturally skeptical of such a position. I fervently believe that foreign language learning is essential for children’s development into informed and productive citizens of the world. But even more urgent is my alarm at the growing tendency to accept and even foster the decline of the sort of interpersonal human contact that learning languages both requires and cultivates.

[...] The difference between natural and computer languages is not merely one of degree, with natural languages’ involving vocabularies that are several orders of magnitude larger than those of computer languages. Natural languages aren’t just more complex versions of the algorithms with which we teach machines to do tasks; they are also the living embodiments of our essence as social animals. We express our love and our losses, explore beauty, justice and the meaning of our existence, and even come to know ourselves all through natural languages.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Monday March 25 2019, @02:41PM (3 children)

    by Immerman (3985) on Monday March 25 2019, @02:41PM (#819531)

    > it exposes you to new ways of thinking

    Only if you're not fluent in math yet. It's arguably a decent substitute for a mid-level math credit on those grounds, but not a foreign language.

    Computer languages are designed to issue commands to a glorified calculator. They expose you to new ways of thinking only insofar as they require you to break down complex commands into an exhaustive list of steps simple enough for a calculator to perform without further human intervention.

    Human language in contrast is designed to communicate. To allow the efficient, bi-directional exchange of complex human concepts - something computer languages can't do at all.

    And every human language has a pantheon of encoded cultural concepts and assumptions into its structure, some of which will be alien to those encoded into your native language. Learning your second language is often as much a matter of learning to recognize and break free from the encoded assumptions of your first language that are getting in the way - subsequent languages are typically far simpler to learn, because you've already done the hard part in breaking free from the confines of your first language.

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  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday March 25 2019, @03:46PM (2 children)

    Human language in contrast is designed to communicate. To allow the efficient, bi-directional exchange of complex human concepts - something computer languages can't do at all.

    Computer languages (except possibly assembly) are not math any more than this conversation is (unless you think everything you think and do isn't governed by physics, which is just math with a fancy shirt on). They've both been abstracted so far from math that nearly all of their context is lost when you try to think of them as such.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday March 26 2019, @05:14AM (1 child)

      by Immerman (3985) on Tuesday March 26 2019, @05:14AM (#819952)

      Have you ever taken a graduate-level math class? Math gets pretty frigging abstract - real mathematicians don't do arithmetic, they formulate and prove theorems and develop algorithms. And to do so they must decompose their claims into tiny steps that invoke only a single previously-proven theorem at a time, so that there's very little chance of them improperly invoking a previously established truth, and it will be easy for a challenger to spot their failing if they do.

      Math is rich and expressive language, not just a tool. Arguably far richer than any programming language. But like programming languages, it's largely incapable of expressing normal human concepts, though it is a lot better suited to communication, while programming languages are strictly declarative.

      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday March 26 2019, @11:04AM

        Programming languages are indeed about getting stuff done rather than discussing them but they most assuredly both invite and demand new ways of thinking about things, which is the claim the "everyone must learn other languages" folks are always making to justify their position. Between the several spoken languages I know and roughly three times as many programming languages I know, I most definitely had more avenues of thought opened up to me from the coding ones. The ability to converse with more people never really changed how I think much at all. The conversations might have but that was due to content not method of delivery.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.