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Why do some programmers write their own compilers?My elder son and I wrote our own Plain English compiler and IDE, in Plain English, originally, for three reasons. We wanted to know:1. Is it easier to program when you don’t have to translate your natural-language thoughts into an alternate syntax?2. Can natural languages be parsed in a relatively “sloppy” manner (as humans apparently parse them) and still provide a stable enough environment for productive programming?3. Can low-level programs (like compilers) be conveniently and efficiently written in high level languages (like English)?Turns out the answers to all of three questions is, “Yes!”Once it was up and running we used our Plain English programming language to do all sorts of cool things, like writing a WYSIWYG page editor, and using it to document the system:And we wrote a program to draw Hilbert curves……and another to draw landscapes……and another to draw fractal forests……and another to make jigsaw puzzles……and another to show us how to make LEGO mosaics:We also used Plain English to solve the infamous “Eight Queens” problem……and any Sudoku puzzle you can imagine:We also used it to paint like Jackson Pollock with nothing but colored letters……and to write an 800-page “Teach Your Kid to Read” course:And we did it all in Plain English, conveniently and efficiently, using only integers, with no objects, no nested ifs, no nested loops, no dialog boxes, and no scroll bars.See here…The Osmosian Order of Plain English Programmers Welcomes You…for more details.

My favorite programming language is Plain English. My elder son and I wrote our own Plain English compiler and IDE, in Plain English, originally, for three reasons. We wanted to know:1. Is it easier to program when you don’t have to translate your natural-language thoughts into an alternate syntax?2. Can natural languages be parsed in a relatively “sloppy” manner (as humans apparently parse them) and still provide a stable enough environment for productive programming?3. Can low-level programs (like compilers) be conveniently and efficiently written in high level languages (like English)?Turns out the answers to all of three questions is, “Yes!”Using a Pascal-style language we had created earlier, we started with a clean and simple desktop (just alphabetical menus and tabs) to remove all distractions:Then we added a full-path file manager (no sandboxes here!)……and a handy-dandy hexadecimal dumper so we could look at each and every byte of any and every file:Then we wrote an elegant text editor…And we integrated our compiler with the editor so compile-time errors would position us on the offending line of code for quick correction:At this point we re-wrote all of the Pascal-style code in Plain English and switched to programming exclusively in Plain English.After that, we used our Plain English programming system to do all sorts of cool things, like writing the WYSIWYG page editor that we used to document the system:And we wrote a program to draw Hilbert curves……and another to draw landscapes……and another to draw fractal forests……and another to make jigsaw puzzles……and another to show us how to make LEGO mosaics:We also used Plain English to solve the infamous “Eight Queens” problem……and to investigate novel solutions to the “travelling salesman” problem……like this “half-baked Hilbert” approach:…and to solve any Sudoku puzzle you can imagine:We also used it to paint like Jackson Pollock with nothing but colored letters……and to find the center of a circle given four points on the circle……and to write an 800-page “Teach Your Kid to Read” course:And we did it all in Plain English, conveniently and efficiently, using only integers, with no objects, no nested ifs, no nested loops, no dialog boxes, and no scroll bars.See here…The Osmosian Order of Plain English Programmers Welcomes You…for more details.Et voila!

My favorite was a court order. A fellow attorney in my office essentially speaks, writes, and presumably thinks in 16th century English. He apparently wrote a “stipulation” agreed to by 5 lawyers representing 5 different clients.The Judge’s order read, “I can’t decipher whatever the attorneys agreed to. Because it’s incomprehensible, i am ordering the matter to mediation and continuing the trial.Lawyers in our main office saw the court order and asked me to find out what happened. I read the 7 page submission written by the fellow lawyer. When translated into 20th century plain English it said, “The parties agree to resolve this matter at binding arbitration and stipulate to a dismissal of the action without prejudice.” The seven page document our attorney had submitted was truly the acme of legalese.