NLP (Natural Language Processing) for NLP (Natural Language Programming)

Abstract

Abstract. Natural Language Processing holds great promise for making computer interfaces that are easier to use for people, since people will (hopefully) be able to talk to the computer in their own language, rather than learn a specialized language of computer commands. For programming, however, the necessity of a formal programming language for communicating with a computer has always been taken for granted. We would like to challenge this assumption. We believe that modern Natural Language Processing techniques can make possible the use of natural language to (at least partially) express programming ideas, thus drastically increasing the accessibility of programming to non-expert users. To demonstrate the feasibility of Natural Language Programming, this paper tackles what are perceived to be some of the hardest cases: steps and loops. We look at a corpus of English descriptions used as programming assignments, and develop some techniques for mapping linguistic constructs onto program structures, which we refer to as programmatic semantics.

Theory, Methodology, and Implementation of Robotic Intelligence and Communication

“…Probably the closest NLP has ever come to handling problems that are similar to the ones we deal with in this proposal is in the never-dying dream to program in natural language, a dream that recurs with almost every new approach to NLP-for the latest efforts in this direction, see, for instance 28,29 . This is not to be confused with the Computing with Words initiative 30 , which limits its purview to computational interpretations, or "precisations," of just a handful of words, mostly scalarized quantifiers.…”

Deriving time lines from texts

“…In paper [6] Mihalcea, Liu, and Lieberman describe how programming steps, loops, and comments can be identified in natural language and mapped to programming constructs. Liu's and Liberman's tool Metafor generates program skeletons from stories [5].…”

Steps towards Scenario-Based Programming with a Natural Language Interface

“…In [34], the authors show how some of the more subtle aspects of procedural programming -steps and loops -can be handled effectively, and express their believe that advances in natural language processing can contribute to the task of natural language programming, for descriptive and procedural programming paradigms.…”