Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!harpo!seismo!hao!hplabs!sri-unix!TREITEL@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA From: TREITEL@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA Newsgroups: net.ai Subject: Re: AIList Digest V2 #1 Message-ID: <15250@sri-arpa.UUCP> Date: Wed, 4-Jan-84 20:23:38 EST Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.15250 Posted: Wed Jan 4 20:23:38 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 13-Jan-84 04:08:27 EST Lines: 17 From: Richard Treitel [in response to Herb Lin's questions] Well, 2 more or less answers 1. One of the main reasons why Lisp and not C is the language of many people's choice for AI work is that you can easily cons up at run time a piece of data which "is" the next action you are going to take. In most languages you are restricted to choosing from pre-written actions, unless you include some kind of interpreter right there in your AI program. Another reason is that Lisp has all sorts of extensibility. As for 3, the obvious response is that in Pascal control has to be routed to an IF statement before it can do any good, whereas in a production system, control automatically "goes" to any production that is applicable. This is highly over-simplified and may not be the answer you were looking for. - Richard