Is "binary" a language?
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Tell your boss to fire the second camp.
Go and never darken my towels again - Groucho Marx
01 You have an off by one error. 10 It would be discrimination. 11 You understood thus far, ergo language.
Dwayne J. Baldwin
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Help us settle a programmatic civil war here at my job... The first camp says "binary is NOT any kind of language". The second camp says "binary IS a kind of language". Neither camp is implying that there are teams of binary programmers out there or anything, there's just a debate on what constitutes a "language". What say you? Is binary a language? Thanks!
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Help us settle a programmatic civil war here at my job... The first camp says "binary is NOT any kind of language". The second camp says "binary IS a kind of language". Neither camp is implying that there are teams of binary programmers out there or anything, there's just a debate on what constitutes a "language". What say you? Is binary a language? Thanks!
"Binary" is the only true language as part of the universal multi-lingual "N-ary"! See here for more (the report will be soon updated with the universal equations of all Turing Machines. Notification will follow) http://cag.dat.demokritos.gr/publications/PolyRoots.pdf[^]
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Help us settle a programmatic civil war here at my job... The first camp says "binary is NOT any kind of language". The second camp says "binary IS a kind of language". Neither camp is implying that there are teams of binary programmers out there or anything, there's just a debate on what constitutes a "language". What say you? Is binary a language? Thanks!
Code (not language) used in digital computers, based on a binary number system in which there are only two possible states, off and on, usually symbolized by 0 and 1.
NKS
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Help us settle a programmatic civil war here at my job... The first camp says "binary is NOT any kind of language". The second camp says "binary IS a kind of language". Neither camp is implying that there are teams of binary programmers out there or anything, there's just a debate on what constitutes a "language". What say you? Is binary a language? Thanks!
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No, at least not in the commonly held notion of what a language is. It could be construed to be an alphabet, of sorts, by which you can build meaning by combining the characters to produce 'words' that convey a meaning that is more than the sum of the parts. Another test might be that language is a spoken medium and it would be pretty difficult to speak binary in that you could voice a string of zeroes and ones with appropriate breaks or stresses whereas with a 'normal' language the characters combine to create meaning that can be articulated vocally in a meaningful way with more natural or learnt breaks and stresses. I suppose if you could find someone else that spoke binary you would have a language but it would, to our ears, sound very odd and take a long time to say almost nothing. :-)
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair. nils illegitimus carborundum me, me, me
never seen the startrek people called "binars" ( ;) ) they spoke binary and interface directly with computers ( :laugh: ) I would say though that 01 is their alphabet.
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Help us settle a programmatic civil war here at my job... The first camp says "binary is NOT any kind of language". The second camp says "binary IS a kind of language". Neither camp is implying that there are teams of binary programmers out there or anything, there's just a debate on what constitutes a "language". What say you? Is binary a language? Thanks!
The answer, as others pointed out, is no - it is an alphabet, not a language. A language, by it's exact definition, is a pair(Alphabet, Grammar). You can't have a language without Grammar, and you must define the grammar on the basis of an alphabet.
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"Binary" is the only true language as part of the universal multi-lingual "N-ary"! See here for more (the report will be soon updated with the universal equations of all Turing Machines. Notification will follow) http://cag.dat.demokritos.gr/publications/PolyRoots.pdf[^]
New updated version of my Report with the Universal Turing Dynamical System Equations: http://cag.dat.demokritos.gr/publications/TR2011-1.pdf[^]
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Definitely a language. Definitely not a programming language.
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.” I wouldn't let CG touch my Abacus! When you're wrestling a gorilla, you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is.
Henry Minute wrote:
Definitely a language
Well, I came down in the other camp, not a language. But if you're sure. ;-) Which definition of language are you rolling with there? Personally, I'd say any language needed more than just symbols to constitute meaning. The fact that binary can be used to convey meaning is not sufficient - just as an alphabet is not a language - the langage needs constructional forms that define valid sentences and structure. Even comparing it to an alphabet is dubious - I'd go along with the definition of "a base 2 number system" as being the best I've seen here.
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Help us settle a programmatic civil war here at my job... The first camp says "binary is NOT any kind of language". The second camp says "binary IS a kind of language". Neither camp is implying that there are teams of binary programmers out there or anything, there's just a debate on what constitutes a "language". What say you? Is binary a language? Thanks!
It is a language. Not a natural language, not a programming language, but a language nonetheless. You can translate English into binary, and vice versa - in theory, you could even communicate with other humans in binary. Like most languages, it's merely an encoding of abstract concepts (like the theoretical "1+1")
I are Troll :suss:
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Help us settle a programmatic civil war here at my job... The first camp says "binary is NOT any kind of language". The second camp says "binary IS a kind of language". Neither camp is implying that there are teams of binary programmers out there or anything, there's just a debate on what constitutes a "language". What say you? Is binary a language? Thanks!
Of course this is just my opinion, and by no means definitive. But as I see it, at the basest level, the language is the instruction set of the computer's processor. Without being organized into patterns that represent processor recognized op-codes and operands (language), binary is, in and of itself, meaningless. Just as a string of alphabetic characters is inherantly meaningless until organized into recognized words and phrases to give it meaning (the rules governing that organization to convey meaning being language). The difference between an alphabet and a language comes in the organization. Alphabetic (as well as binary) characters are the building blocks of language, but not the language itself, it is the rules that govern organization of binary representations into meaningful patterns of action and data that constitute language. For a computer, that organization is the perscribed behaviors of the instruction set's op-codes on data operands that constitute language.
Kevin Rucker, Application Programmer QSS Group, Inc. United States Coast Guard OSC Kevin.D.Rucker@uscg.mil "Programming is an art form that fights back." -- Chad Hower
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Help us settle a programmatic civil war here at my job... The first camp says "binary is NOT any kind of language". The second camp says "binary IS a kind of language". Neither camp is implying that there are teams of binary programmers out there or anything, there's just a debate on what constitutes a "language". What say you? Is binary a language? Thanks!
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:laugh:
See the uncyclopedia article on this matter: http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Binary[^]
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Help us settle a programmatic civil war here at my job... The first camp says "binary is NOT any kind of language". The second camp says "binary IS a kind of language". Neither camp is implying that there are teams of binary programmers out there or anything, there's just a debate on what constitutes a "language". What say you? Is binary a language? Thanks!
I think The issue with this discussion stems from the usage of the word "Language". We are discussing this topic (as any) through a lense, that lense being: "what defines a language?". But we are defining a language incorrectly (I think). Many have taken to the dictionary definition and argued the need for grammar and constructs. I feel in this case such things are arbitray and invented by humans for human language. Binary is certainly not a HUMAN Language, on this we can all agree. But the computer only requires such things(grammar, syntax etc) as and when it has been told to demand them like in the IDE's for T-SQL or C#. The real question then is not if binary is a Human language according to the dictionary, but rather the question should be: "Is it possible to enter an instruction to a computer in the form of binary, and have the computer then use this instruction to perform an expected result?". IF the answer is yes, then it is indeed a computer language if the answer is no, then it is not a language at all but merely a medium. In any case it is important to draw the distinction between how people communicate and how computers communicate, and not confuse the two. So, what say you now? :)
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Help us settle a programmatic civil war here at my job... The first camp says "binary is NOT any kind of language". The second camp says "binary IS a kind of language". Neither camp is implying that there are teams of binary programmers out there or anything, there's just a debate on what constitutes a "language". What say you? Is binary a language? Thanks!
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you are right, and so are they. try and define language. 1. everything is a language, as it has vocabulary, has or could have syntax (rules about what is allowed and isn't allowed), has or could have semantics (giving meaning to the linguistic building blocks). 2. there are no languages, it is impossible to strictly define a language; all practical languages are ambiguous to some degree; a lot of languages can not even be parsed correctly all the time. if you find time to discuss such things at work, it tells me there are too many of you at your job... now go back to work and write some more assembly instructions. :) PS: is DNA a language?
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Help us settle a programmatic civil war here at my job... The first camp says "binary is NOT any kind of language". The second camp says "binary IS a kind of language". Neither camp is implying that there are teams of binary programmers out there or anything, there's just a debate on what constitutes a "language". What say you? Is binary a language? Thanks!
No, it's not a language, it's a number system. One can certainly express language using a number system, but only when combining it with an encoding/decoding scheme, like ASCII. Without some sort of context, a string of numbers is just a string of numbers. 0100 0001 doesn't mean "A" unless something says it does. And even then you only have an alphabet, not a language. So binary + ASCII + English is a language, but binary isn't.
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Help us settle a programmatic civil war here at my job... The first camp says "binary is NOT any kind of language". The second camp says "binary IS a kind of language". Neither camp is implying that there are teams of binary programmers out there or anything, there's just a debate on what constitutes a "language". What say you? Is binary a language? Thanks!
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Help us settle a programmatic civil war here at my job... The first camp says "binary is NOT any kind of language". The second camp says "binary IS a kind of language". Neither camp is implying that there are teams of binary programmers out there or anything, there's just a debate on what constitutes a "language". What say you? Is binary a language? Thanks!
Binary is an alphabet. ...it's also a base 2 number system. ...AND a language. The only confusing part is one of terminology. There is no exact analogy for these concepts existing in the English language, as the English language is broken down into several levels of a hierarchy that "binary" is not subject to. In English, "A" and "B" are letters. "A", "B", "C", "D" and the other 22 letters collectively form an "alphabet". Letters form words. Words become language. There are many layers to the hierarchy of 'language', but 'binary' is still 'binary' at every level of this hierarchy. There are no other terms for the different uses at each level. For example, with binary, "10" is the complete alphabet. "10" is also a word that communicates meaning. And since "binary" is both the singular and plural form of the word, "10110101001010110000101001001010100100101010010" is language as well, as the poster demonstrated above with his entire paragraph of 'binary'. Taking the analogy even further, there are actually different 'dialects' of this language, like big-endian and little-endian.
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No, it's not a language, it's a number system. One can certainly express language using a number system, but only when combining it with an encoding/decoding scheme, like ASCII. Without some sort of context, a string of numbers is just a string of numbers. 0100 0001 doesn't mean "A" unless something says it does. And even then you only have an alphabet, not a language. So binary + ASCII + English is a language, but binary isn't.
I think the confusion is less about "what is a language?" and more about "what is binary?" I think some people here are interchanging "binary" with "machine language". Like, "I've programmed computers in binary." I'm not sure that's entirely accurate. It would be like me saying, "I just wrote this post in Roman/Latin." I think binary is technically the base-2 number system, but may also be used to refer to any collection of 1's and 0's. Binary is not machine language, even though machine language is written in binary. Roman is not English, even though English is written with Roman characters.