Unverified50% confidenceOpinionExact time
The core argument of EWD667 is that natural language is vague, ambiguous and context-dependent, whereas programs require precise, unambiguous, mechanically executable instructions, so treating natural language as a programming language is a misunderstanding of the nature of programming.
1
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50%
Confidence
Long-term
Relevance
10/23/2026
First Seen
Sources
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Related Claims
UnverifiedNatural language programming lowers the cognitive threshold for programming from mastering syntactic rules to clearly expressing requirements.75% similarUnverifiedSome commenters believe that when Dijkstra was writing, machines' ability to understand natural language was essentially zero, whereas today large models can handle ambiguity and context to a considerable degree, so EWD667 criticizes "treating natural language as a substitute," and the more realistic current approach is "natural language as the interface, formal verification as the safeguard."75% similarUnverifiedAutomatically converting vague natural language instructions into formal specifications is itself an unsolved problem, so the idea of "natural language as the interface, formal verification as the safeguard" pushes the formalization step later rather than eliminating it.72% similarPartially Verified当前自然语言提示的最大问题在于歧义性，同样的需求不同人写出的提示词可能完全不同，AI产出的代码也可能截然不同71% similarUnverifiedThe ambiguity of natural language descriptions may cause problems: how AI handles details not explicitly specified in a sentence, such as field mappings, trigger conditions, and authentication configuration, still requires more practical use to verify.71% similar
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