Comment Re:Nonsense (Score 4, Interesting) 480
``Code is for compilers, text is for people''?
No.
A natural language like English is, of course, the preferred means of communication for informal discourse. Natural languages, however, are often too ambiguous and verbose to function well when expressing precise algorithms.
Those of you who are programmers, you tell me: which is easier to understand, the DeCSS code in C, or the same code in haiku? (I think you can find the latter off Dr. Felten's homepage at Princeton.) Which is easier to work with?
Taken at its face value and out of context, the court's statement is going to be somewhat ridiculous, yes. However, that does not change the fact that programming languages are as useful for communicating algorithms between people as they are for communicating algorithms from a person to a computer.
No.
A natural language like English is, of course, the preferred means of communication for informal discourse. Natural languages, however, are often too ambiguous and verbose to function well when expressing precise algorithms.
Those of you who are programmers, you tell me: which is easier to understand, the DeCSS code in C, or the same code in haiku? (I think you can find the latter off Dr. Felten's homepage at Princeton.) Which is easier to work with?
Taken at its face value and out of context, the court's statement is going to be somewhat ridiculous, yes. However, that does not change the fact that programming languages are as useful for communicating algorithms between people as they are for communicating algorithms from a person to a computer.
