Bye bye Codecademy, MIT shows off a way to program using natural language

What if you could learn to code just by learning a few commands that match the way we speak or write?

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology have shown off that for a few tasks, such as tweaking word processing documents and spreadsheets, people could use natural language as opposed to specific programming languages. As we spend more time in our digital worlds, making the manipulation of that world easier for everyone is the goal behind several startups such as IFTTTCodecademy or even ARB Labs, and is an essential ingredient for further breakthroughs.

The researchers in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory demonstrated their findings using productivity software, but their methods might also work for other programming tasks. While it’s not exactly clear from the MIT release how this will work in practice, it’s awesome that such research is even happening. Giving more people the…