I was pairing with my friend Vernon at work last week, on a tool I've been developing. He was smiling broadly as I talked him through what I'd done because we've been here before. The tool facilitates a task that's time-consuming, inefficient, error-prone, tiresome, and important to get right. Vern knows that those kinds of factors trigger me to change or build something, and that's why he was struggling not to laugh out loud. He held himself together and asked a bunch of sensible questions about the need, the desired outcome, and the approach I'd taken. Then he mentioned a talk by Daniel Terhorst-North, called The Best Programmer I Know, and said that much of it paralleled what he sees me doing. It was my turn to laugh then, because I am not a good programmer, and I thought he knew that already. What I do accept, though, is that I am focussed on the value that programs can give, and getting some of that value as early as possible. He sent me a link to the ta
Yes. It's bound up in something called a practice language. See Collins: Rethinking Expertise, also Tacit and Explicit Knowledge
ReplyDeleteNote that prescriptive grammar is not the only kind of grammar.
ReplyDeleteDescriptive grammar is something every speaker has to have wired in their brains in order to use it. And if it exists it's never futile to try to figure it out (even if it turns out as ugly as the standard model).
Also focusing on writing instead of speaking when discussing natural languages outside NLP domain is a bit short-sighted (see Pinker's talk for some nice definitions).
Anyway, if testing is a language, does it have a universal grammar?