Precise Nonsense

Takeaway: code is completely arbitrary and words are devoid of their natural language meaning. Treat every word and symbol as an incantation.

When first learning how to code, it is tempting to find meaning in the code and relate it to words and sentences in natural language. Consider this bit of SQL:

select name, age from dogs where breed = "mixed";

It reads like English! It might even convince you that you can coax or cajole the computer to do what you’d like. This is however a trap.

Coding languages are unnatural constructions.

While many resources aim to demystify code and reduce the amount of “magic” a programmer relies on, it is useful…