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Originally Posted by grumpy
You are focusing only on syntax. Number of words known isn't the only measure of fluency in a natural language. There is also the semantics and grammar. It just happens that the process of learning a natural language happens to result in a student having a working knowledge of semantics and grammar at about the point where s/he has learnt 6000 words or so.
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Even so, it only takes a few weeks at
most for an experienced programmer to learn all the syntax of a new language. Now, I might be a little slow, but for a natural language I'd take years to get such a complete grasp of grammatical rules.
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Originally Posted by grumpy
The reason that similarities between syntaxes of programming languages appear to run deep is that those syntaxes are actually based on english, and hence readable to the native english speaker.
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I suspect that today it's more due to programming tradition.
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Originally Posted by grumpy
For example, a construct "if (x = 1)" is actually readable (in a "big hands, small maps" kind of way) to someone who has a little knowledge of english. That is a property of the syntax of the language. But the actual meaning of that construct is where the differences between languages come in. For example, "if (x = 1)" has a markedly different effect in C than it does in Basic.
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You're looking at it from a superficial perspective. Whilst the names and symbols may change, the structures underneath are the same. If and While are constructs found in most computer languages; even if they were named Foo and Bar, it would not take long for a programmer to get used to typing Foo in place of If, and Bar in place of While.
Likewise, even if you associate assignment with '=' and equality with '==', it's not going to take long before you learn that in BASIC, '=' has both meaning, depending on whether it is inside or outside a boolean condition..