Linked by Richard Wareham on Mon 8th Mar 2004 20:49 UTC
This essay describes the surprising results of a brief trial with a group of new computer users about the relative ease of the command line interface versus the GUIs now omnipresent in computer interfaces. It comes from practical experience I have of teaching computing to complete beginners or newbies as computer power-users often term them.
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The "natural language" interface is an illusion. No human language is precise, consise, consistant enough for giving orders to a computer.
For a caricatural example, see COBOL.
A consistant computer language is much more senseful than any human language adaptation tweak.
On a book about compilers from R.A.Finkel, he writes :
"[ My father ] was learning a language that could be read and written, but not pronounced. ( see ftp://ftp.aw.com/cseng/authors/finkel/apld/ )