tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jun 12 05:14:48 1996

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Re: Klingon prog language

You (Mark E. Shoulson) said:
> >This is a _very_ interesting topic: What (high level) programming
> >languages were/are the Klingons using? What's the syntax like?
> >What are the commands?
And how were the computers protected from the wrath of a disgruntled
Klingon programmer and his disrupter?

> I think it's safe to say that the programming languages in use by the
> HUMANS at the time of Star Trek are likely nothing whatever like we're
> using now.  Modern computer languages would have been unrecognizable as
> such 30 years ago, and we're talking centuries in the future.  It's likely
> nobody programs computers then; they're too complicated to be programmed by
> anything except other computers, which perhaps eventually get some sort of
> guilelines in the form of natural language processing (which we know works
> in ST's time frame).
I think it's more cost-effective to have a human 'program' the rough
idea in an higher level language and have a computerprogram expand it
to machinelevel. This is a trend you can observe even now. It would
seem that they lost the security- and rebustness-demands somewhere
along the way. Anybody with a clue seems to be able to upload malicious
software into the Enterprise's computers. The same computer that does
not care whether the captain or another crewmember is suddenly missing.
We could even talk about unrelated systems being capable of controlling
eachother (holodeck VS navigation comes to mind).
But I'm rambling....

> certainly know more about how Humans think than how Klingons think.  You
> want the most natural language?  It's the programmer's native language,
> whatever that may be.  Simple enough?
I disagree. Natural languages do not offer the means to express precise
concepts compactly and concisly. This is _the_ problem when trying to
discuss user-requirements with someone who cannot read the formalism
you are using to define it. The canonical example is of the development
of software for a nuclear reactor. They wanted to have an alarm ringing
when the fluidlevel exceeded a certain level. There are at least 4
distinctly different ways this requirement could be interpreted, some of
which definately not intended.

I'm sorry, it would seem that my study got the better of me :)

> ~mark
Wouter

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