The naturalness of software

E.T. Barr*; P. Devanbu    * University College London, London, United Kingdom UC Davis, Davis, CA, United States

Abstract

Of all that we humans do, it is our use of language that most sets us apart from animals. Honed by millions of years of cultural and biological evolution, language is a natural, ordinary, even instinctive part of everyday life [2]. However much we authors may labor to fashion lucid prose for this learned tome, we speak and write spontaneously and freely in daily life: most of what we say is simple, repetitive, and effortless. This quotidian aspect of natural, human linguistic behavior, together with large online corpora of utterances, modern computing resources, and statistical innovations, ...

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