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>>> What these programs really showed was that there's a subset of natural language that's a formal language.

Don't take this as any fanboy stuff, but pg is still good at putting big thoughts in small sentences. Its a sort of mental zip function.

Also this is why I still type into google things like 'rubik solve how-to' instead of my daughter doing "show me how to solve a rubiks cube"

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Yes. He is a gifted writer, very succinct. Funny that his writing pursuits all seem to be incidental, like the Lisp books (per his own account), and the essays, which certainly played a part in his success.

Gifted? Or extremely hard-working?

Writing is like many processes - in the final show, the scaffolding has gone, the drafts are discarded, the tweaks and feedback are hidden, and all you are left with is the final revision of a very long chain and a "wow!".

Every small step made an improvement, great writing is rewriting, and the steps accumulate over a longer period than you can see from the final text.

http://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/old-ways

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