In EDW68 Dijkstra expresses his concerns about a project reported by researcher H.J. Gawlik to create a compiler based on a combination of mathematical notation and plain English. Dijkstra’s concern lies not so much due in the fact the idea was raised, but that it still existed after the 2,5 year that passed since he first heard about it.

Gawlik was a researcher in the Royal Armament and Development Establishment, a UK Defense R&D organisation. (I tried to retrieve some personal data on Personal data on Gawlik but the Internet failed me).

According to Dijkstra, plain English, or in general language used for human to human communication, is full of nonsense (humor, sloppiness, incompleteness, contradictions, etc.). What is expected from human to computer communication should be precise and unambiguous.
Therefore plain language is unfit for the purpose Gawlik aims to use it for, it “is obviously unfit to express what has to be expressed now”.

I guess Dijkstra was proven right. Programming languages based on natural languages are nowhere to be found. The approach from Gawlik is a bit like adding human characteristics to AI systems nowadays: it makes the basically as sensitive to erroneous reasoning as human beings themselves.

Gawlik has written a response in which I sense he argues Dijkstra has not understood the goal of what Gawlik was trying to achieve, but unfortunately I can not find the full article and do not wish to may 19$ for it on ACM (goodness, why?).