Comment by quantadev
English Language is the best general purpose conveyance of arbitrary ideas, and it has syntax rules just like programming languages. It's "best" by the metric of being "easiest for humans to understand". That's what I mean by best, in this case.
I think one can argue that LISP is the "best" computer programming language based on a set of metrics that revolve around simplicity and composability. There's no simpler language. There simply cannot be, because there's nothing "extra" in LISP. It's the most compact (while still being human readable) way to define and/or call functions.
You can also argue that LISP is closer to English than any other programming language, because in English we use parenthesis's and lists to enumerate things related to what has been said. For example "(add, 1, 2)" is axiomatically the best way to express adding two numbers, in a way that scales to arbitrary numbers of operations. It's superior to "(1+2)" because the plus sign is a single character (cannot scale), and therefore there are a limited number of them, and using symbols means humans have to memorize them rather than simply reading their name. But "add" is a name one can read. Also "add one and two" is a valid English sentence, so all LISP programs are similarly valid English language expressions, where the parenthesis is merely used for grouping language "clauses".
If the world were ever to be forced to agree on one single high level programming language, it would necessarily need to be LISP for about 10 other huge reasons I could name: Everything from ease of writing parsers, to compression of code, simplicity, ease for learning, even as a young child, etc.
> English Language is the best general purpose conveyance of arbitrary ideas, and it has syntax rules just like programming languages. It's "best" by the metric of being "easiest for humans to understand". That's what I mean by best, in this case.
This is the point I take issue with. I agree with you that lisp is the simplest and "best" programming language. Unlike lisp, there is no clear "best" natural language that is more simple and composable than all other natural languages (I know that's not what your claiming, just pointing that out). The dimension of your "best metric" for language is pretty bizarre though; all you are saying is that spoken/written language, in general, is better than grunts and pointing. If you actually compare the space of natural language and the space of programming languages, which is much more interesting imo, I think you would have to agree that non-lisp programming languages are more similar to natural language because their development was more practical and unprincipled than lisp.