Programming in Natural Language

Abstract

The whole 70-years history of electronic computers has been a fight between extremely incompatible languages: the machine code understandable by computer's processor and natural human languages understandable by computer users – humans. Main methods to overcame this incompatibility and advance software production have been introduction of high-level programming languages and reuse – libraries, but with increasing volumes and complexity of data software production is facing bigger and bigger problems. With advance of ChatGPT-like programs has appeared an insight that computers could understand natural language and the natural language could be used to write programs. Here we investigate how realistic this perspective is. In our paper we discuss about the evolution steps in software development and focus in the use of Large Language Models (LLM) based Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems in generating code based on the use of natural language as problem specification. However, development work still requires interaction between both an application area expert and a technical software developer in order to result in a reliable software solution.