Natural language programming

Natural Language Programming (NLP) is an ontology-assisted way of programming in terms of natural language sentences, e.g. English. A structured document with Content, sections and subsections for explanations of sentences forms a NLP document, which is actually a computer program. Natural languages and natural language user interfaces include Inform7, a natural programming language for making interactive fiction; Shakespeare, an esoteric natural programming language in the style of the plays of William Shakespeare, and Wolfram Alpha, a computational knowledge engine, using natural language input.

The smallest unit of statement in NLP is a sentence. Each sentence is stated in terms of concepts from the underlying ontology, attributes in that ontology and named objects in capital letters. In an NLP text every sentence unambiguously compiles into a procedure call in the underlying high-level programming language such as MATLAB, Octave, SciLab, Python, etc.

Symbolic languages such as Mathematica are capable of interpreted processing of queries by sentences. This can allow interactive requests such as that implemented in Wolfram Alpha. The difference between these and NLP is that the latter builds up a single program or a library of routines that are programmed through natural language sentences using an ontology that defines the available data structures in a high level programming language.

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