Yes, that’s a very insightful remark! I was going to mention that human language and programming languages are fundamentally different things, but I already wrote too much.
Interestingly, though, in the 1950s Chomsky’s first attempts at characterizing human language took just such a route, and involved simple transformational grammars and other concepts that did not work for human language, but turned out to be useful for the analysis of programming languages. As a result, we now learn about things like the Chomsky Hierarchy in undergraduate models of computation classes.
Thanks for your long post, it was very informative and you've convinced me about "could care less".
I think HN's apparently strange mix of anti-authoritarianism with prescriptive attitudes to language becomes easier to understand if you consider that the anti-authoritarianism is not an independent value, existing for its own sake. It goes hand in glove with a meritocratic value. HN contributors aim for and admire quality over authority, and I think that's a better explanation for the language pedantry we sometimes demonstrate.
Of course I'm describing the ideal, which is not always achieved, and HN's idea of "quality" in the use of language is subjective.
Interestingly, though, in the 1950s Chomsky’s first attempts at characterizing human language took just such a route, and involved simple transformational grammars and other concepts that did not work for human language, but turned out to be useful for the analysis of programming languages. As a result, we now learn about things like the Chomsky Hierarchy in undergraduate models of computation classes.