Comment by mightyham
> 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.
The reason I say LISP is close to English is because it's syntax is purely a verb followed by objects, and there's [practically] no other symbols in the language other than parenthesis.
Since the word "best" always gets everyone's dander up on HN, I was very careful to point out we have to define our metrics (of comparison) before we can use that word, and that's precisely what I did.