Hey HN, I’m interested in the philosophical side of software but what I’m currently looking for is slightly different from the standard ‘philosophy of computer science’ information and I don’t know how to word a search to find what I want.

What I’m interested in is information regarding the language implications of trying to translate others requests into our understanding and then from our mental understanding into software which actually does a thing. I’m interested in the loss and friction that exists between each transferral of understanding.

Does anyone know of any information, discussions or research around this? Taking someone else's ‘intent’ and translating it into a ‘thing’ that ‘does’. I can’t think of many industries where this happens. A few that seem surface similar might be translating novels into another language or architecture but even those result in a ‘thing’ that ‘is’ rather than ‘does’ like software.

Anyway, I’d love it if anyone could share anything they might have found around what is effectively multiple layers of translation. Even anything on the lossy nature of translating our own mental models from an internal language to written code would be fascinating.