Is "binary" a language?
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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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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.
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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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That's like saying the alphabet is a language. Binary can provide the building blocks of a language, but I do not see how it can be a language itself.
Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends.
I agree! I was trying to find a way to explain what was on my mind and you got it right on!
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010000100110010100100000011100110111010101110010011001 010010000001110100011011110010000001100100011100100110 100101101110011010110010000001111001011011110111010101 110010001000000100111101110110011000010110110001110100 01101001011011100110010100101110
Be sure to drink your Ovaltine
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See the uncyclopedia article on this matter: http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Binary[^]
I can't believe I was dumb-nerd enough to write a decoder...
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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!
If binary is a language, so is the decimal system. To my knowledge, binary strings just represent numbers. There's no grammar or structure involved. Only numerical values. I wouldn't call the decimal/binary/hexadecimal/.../ system a language. And I also wouldn't call it an alphabet either. I'ld call it what it is: a numerical system... base 2.
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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.
ohreallyus wrote:
Letters form words. Words become language.
No. Words are components that are combined to provide communication in a language. Letters are used to give a representation of words. Without words (whether spoken / written / signed or otherwise communicated), languages would not exist; but, conversely, words would not exist without languages. There is a symbiosis - words and languages co-exist. Binary sequences can be used as representations of information. They are not the information, but the ordering of the components in the sequence can be used to convey information. It is not necessary for there to be any recipient who understands the representation (e.g. the script of the Indus Valley Civilisation has not been decoded but is a representation of 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!
actually binary is the new way of designing life...we computer science engineers have redesigned the whole world using binary that is just 1 and 0...so cheers to all and cheers to this way of life :)
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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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That's like saying the alphabet is a language. Binary can provide the building blocks of a language, but I do not see how it can be a language itself.
Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends.
Yes. The machine's instruction set, OTOH, is a language. Perhaps the argument arises from a convolution of the terms "binary" and "machine code".