How do linguists view programming languages?

Read Logan R. Kearsley’s answer to How do linguists view programming languages? Vote #1 Logan R. Kearsley.

What he said.

Supplemental:

At very very most, a linguist programmer will see YACC rules specifying a programming language’s syntax, and think “Oh, how cute. Kinda like phrase structure rules, but ludicrously simpler.”

Or, look at the three flavours of semantics of computer languages, procedural, denotational and axiomatic, and find hilarity in their mismatch to human language semantics. It’s almost like the semantics of computer languages is modelling nothing more than the narrow concerns of a Turing machine’s universe.

Oh wait…

If a linguist gets to either YACC or axiomatic semantics, btw, he’s delving a lot deeper into actual Computer Science than any programmer under 40 that I’ve met.

Vote #1 Logan R. Kearsley.