Does knowing a Natural Language well help with Programming?

Question

We all hear that math at least helps a little bit with programming. My question though, does English or other natural language skills help with programming? I know it has to help with technical documentation, but what about actual programming? Are certain constructs in a programming language also there in natural languages? Does knowing how to write a 20 page research paper help with writing a 20k loc programming project?

Answer 1

Dijkstra went so far as to say: "Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer."

Edit: yes, I'm reasonably certain he was talking about the programming part of the job. Here's a bit more complete quote:

The problems of business administration in general and database management in particular are much too difficult for people who think in IBMerese, compounded by sloppy English.

About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead.

Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer.

From EWD498.

I certainly can't speak for Dijkstra, but I think it's impossible to cleanly separate the part where you're doing actual programming from the part where you're interacting with people. Just for example, even when you're working alone, it's crucial that you're able to understand (clearly and unambiguously) notes you wrote down about what to do, the nature of a bug, etc. A good command of English is necessary even when nobody else is involved at all (and, of course, that's unusual except on trivial tasks).

Answer 2

I don't know about causality, but the skill set required to write well overlaps quite a bit with those required for programming: knowing how to plan, being able to keep a myriad of details consistent, being able to make things clear for a future reader, knowing how to organize your thoughts and the resultant product. That isn't to say that a successful author would make a good programmer, but a programmer with good language skills and the same logic/math/deductive skills is probably a better programmer than one with poor language skills -- at least the code has a greater chance of being understandable.

Answer 3

Yes. Strong natural language skills help you to organize your thoughts in a coherent way that can easily be understood by others. That can help improve your code in everything from naming variables, methods, classes, etc., to expressing the contexts of objects in your model. Practices such as pair programming require you to be able to communicate well with your partner in order to write good code. Techniques such as Domain Driving Design emphasize using the domain language of the business in your code. Natural language skills facilitate that. And there is a strong drive in the development industry toward more natural language-like tools, e.g. many of the newer testing tools like rspec, gherkin, etc., are moving toward more natural language-like syntax. One of the things many people like about dynamic languages like Ruby and Python are that the code tends to read more like a natural language.

Answer 4

Let me state what should be the obvious: every healthy person above 12 knows at least one natural language. Moreover, every healthy person above 12 is able to generate and parse natural language a complex and rich language, and express and understand an extremely large set of ideas. In general, people are not likely to be limited in their ability to discuss issues by their language, but by the type of things they experienced and learned.

Having said that, there are several language-related skills that you might have thought about.

Writing style. You mentioned those specifically. Written language is different from spoken language. Way less intuitive. This is one reason people have to get coached in writing through their years in the education system.

Coding doesn't really involve writing. I mean, there's comments, but they can be rather laconic. Of course the work of a programmer usually involves at least some writing of documents, and writing abilities to make a difference there.

Analytical skills. Analytical skills are a complicated (not to say fuzzy) concept. Analytical skills aren't really about language, but insomuch they are taught and tested at all, it's in the context of writing essays.

Analytical skills are obviously very important in programming. I am not sure that these are exactly the same skills required to write a good essay about Euthanasia or whatever, but as was previously suggested, they may be related.

Foreign language. For people whose native language isn't English, a certain command of English may be needed. Not in the coding itself (knowing what "while" means in English isn't really critical to understanding what it does in Java), but because much training and support material is available mainly in English (did anyone mention Stack Overflow?). The English requirement may differ on the country you are in, and the company you work for, though.

Communication Skills. Ahhm. I was never exactly sure what this means exactly. Maybe it's a cultural thing. I do suspect it's less about knowing a language and more about knowing people.

So to some up, Dijkstra is a venerable computer scientist, but I am not sure he knew that much about language.

Answer 5

Programming isn't just about writing code. On any programming project of any size there will be the need for:

• initial project proposal documents
• design and architectural documents
• programmers manual
• users manual
• training materials
• communication with third party suppliers
• etc.

On every big project I've worked on I'd guess I spent at least 50% of my time on the English language documents. So yes, an ability to explain and express yourself well is extremely important. Does it lead to writing better code? Once again, I would say yes - the need to provide clear documentation spills over into the need to write better code, itnerfaces et al.