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Discussion on: How did linguistics influence programming?

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Dian Fay

Various grammars come up with some frequency, particularly with regular expressions and query languages. Designing languages and building parsers, interpreters, and compilers naturally entails getting somewhat philosophical about the concept even if you don't dive all the way into programming language theory and its neighbors which have a variety of intersections, overlaps, and dialectics with linguistics. And while its impact hasn't really been noted outside academic circles, semiotics also has a lot to offer practitioners in a field which is fundamentally about the organization and transmission of information.

For a specific case, Larry Wall was a linguist before he became a programmer and that had a big influence on Perl.