Englang, the business | Founders' Review Editorial

I wrote first time about Englang, the concept of a new programming language in December 2019. Schmied Enterprises LLC was founded in 2020. We have been using the concept in our open source software since then.

Englang has two major rules. It compiles to machine code just like C, C++, Java, or JavaScript. The rules are the rules of the English language, when in doubt of interpreting a command.

The design thinking came from a discussion at a conference with an activist investor visiting our Cloudera booth as early as 2018. He was asking about Cloudera, and it's competitors like Hortonworks. His first question was whether they are binary compatible or not. I was working with tests ensuring binary compatibility across updates and upgrades of Hadoop that time. This is what taught me how basic design decisions of software affect the fate of publicly listed companies.

The two companies merged since then. Cloudera is not a publicly listed company anymore. However, I still use the logic to assess the market share of cloud providers like AWS, Azure, GC, Oracle Cloud, and DigitalOcean.

Why is binary compatibility important for a business person? It is similar to liquidity. If a software can be exchanged, then the individual product sells cheaper. However, the product category sells better in volume due to reduced risks. Sales people have a pitch. Such software companies are ideal candidates for M&A.

Imagine a code written in Englang, that lists customers that are likely to buy more of your robotics equipment.

If the code is written in C, your infrastructure department will say, they do not support it. If it is written in Golang, the developers will say, no no they do not like it, it is a different school than Python. If it is written in PHP, your security team may freak out.

If it is written in SQL, your legal team will have concerns of copyrights. Programming languages are Arts on top of the logic. Plain English logic may be widespread from a textbook. Any additional SQL formatting can trace it back to a proprietary source by someone skilled in the Art. It is a risk of intellectual property violations.

If the code is written in plain English, it converts to Englang. Nobody will have any concerns. A small software company can sell such software easily. The easier it converts, the bigger the eventual market share.

What are other benefits?

The English language has been evolving for hundreds of years compared to programming languages of a few decades.

Non native English speakers can get away with a branding different, than English. It increases the total market.

The human language fits the human brain the best. Even your secretary, accountant, or janitorial can verify the validity of such code. Vocal education can be enough to perform many jobs. It will eventually be more secure to share Englang compared to programming languages understood by just a few developers.

Machines learned how to handle English with LLMs like ChatGPT in 2023. It is easier than ever to process and distribute Englang software.

It is simple to maintain, debug, and search. You can use verbal communication to share and verify code with your peer sitting next to you.

Schemas are taught in childhood. There is no need of metadata. This makes Englang easier to use it for APIs. This is especially true, if non-tech people are involved. Forget protobuf or grpc.

There is no need for comments. The code is self documenting. You can use rich text and formatting to design your program. You can add charts or images to describe the behavior.

Englang is ideal for backups. Historians, security people can verify it easily in decades, even when the original technology was deprecated.

Englang is good for privacy compliance. All the data is easy to understand and tag as private without binary metadata.

Eventually enterprises may prefer integrating software in Englang. An enterprise team can implement new code easily without limitations from other departments. Englang is liquid. Startups building Englang will have a bigger total market potential. This is similar to the case of Commodore Basic and Visual Basic decades ago. SQL, the most popular programming language today was also built on a similar concept.

The bigger the market potential the bigger the revenue growth as well. Better compatibility with competitors and customers brings better chances of mergers and acquisitions as an exit path for early stage startups.

Reference

This article was revised on January 9, 2024.