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NL programming is foolish to me not on technical grounds but on practical ones. It is most valuable when the business wants to understand how an already working thing does its job.

I have observed several samples where the business, when provided with a natural language configuration opportunity, will wind up staring blankly at the textarea until the original developer gives them a complete starting point.

I don't think "natural" language makes much of a difference unless you are already skilled in the art of developing useful engineering specifications. I often have to babysit the business through very basic boolean algebra concerns despite everyone having 3+ decades experience dealing with this stuff. Making everyone speak python could only make this worse, not better.

I use HN to keep myself warmed up on natural language expression. The difference between developers who post here prolifically and those who barely write one email a month is fairly shocking in my experience. If you intend to use a specific instrument to accomplish a complex task, you need to practice it constantly. Ideally every single day. There is no substitute for this. There never will be.

> I have observed several samples where the business, when provided with a natural language configuration opportunity, will wind up staring blankly at the textarea until the original developer gives them a complete starting point.

A lot of people lack “system thinking” when they can break down something into a set of elements and describe the relation between them. Once that done though , they can understand a part and manipulate it.

For some “system thinking” is innate. It can also be learned. But it’s a required quality in engineering where you need to create a solution where there was none.