 | |
| Paradigm | People Oriented Programming, Multi-paradigm, Object-oriented |
|---|---|
| Family | Scripting language |
| Designed by | Douglas Simons |
| Developer | Eggplant (software) |
| First appeared | 1992 |
| Stable release | 2.18
/ June 2024 |
| Typing discipline | Duck |
| License | Proprietary |
| Filename extensions |
|
| Website | www |
| Influenced by | |
| xTalk, HyperTalk | |
SenseTalk is a high-level English-like scripting language in the XTalk family, that supports both procedural and object-oriented paradigms. SenseTalk scripts are intended to be largely readable by ordinary people, including those with little to no training in programming.
To this end, SenseTalk includes a number of language elements that provide functionality oriented towards human tasks rather than the underlying machine behavior. For example, to check whether a quantity is divisible by 3, the script could use the expression if quantity is divisible by 3 … or if quantity is a multiple of 3 …, with the emphasis being on readability and a focus on the human concept of divisibility. [1] Compare this to more traditional programming languages (C, Java, Python, etc.) where the same test would typically be written as if (quantity % 3) == 0 …, with the focus being on the machine operations needed to determine the result. [2]
This shift in focus away from the underlying machine computation, towards an English-like description of the behavior in human terms leads to the description of SenseTalk as a “People Oriented Programming language”. [3]