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From: ronse@prlb2.UUCP (Ronse)
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: FORTRAN in AI :-)
Message-ID: <701@prlb2.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 19-Jun-85 18:39:01 EDT
Article-I.D.: prlb2.701
Posted: Wed Jun 19 18:39:01 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 21-Jun-85 05:32:32 EDT
Organization: Philips Research Laboratory Brussels
Lines: 29

[]

Read in `Catalogue of Artificial Intelligence Tools' (ed. Alan Bundy,
Springer-Verlag 1984) on page 38 under the title ``FORTRAN'':

FORTRAN is the programming language considered by many to be the natural
successor of LISP and Prolog for AI research. Its advantages include:
	1. It is very efficient for numerical computations (many AI
	   programs rely heavily on number-crunching techniques).
	2. AI problems tend to be very poorly structured, meaning that
	   control needs to move frequently from one part of a program to 
	   another. FORTRAN provides a special mechanism for achieving
	   this, the so-called GOTO statement.
	3. FORTRAN provides a very efficient data structure, the array,
	   which is particularly useful if, for example, one wishes to
	   process a collection of English sentences each of which has
	   the same length.

Maybe this text was written by a joke expert system?


			maldoror@prlb2.UUCP

{enea,hirst1,inria,mcvax,munnari,philabs,seismo,unido}!prlb2!maldoror

Christian Ronse
Philips Research Laboratory Brussels
Av. E. Van Becelaere, 2 b. 8
B-1170 Brussels, Belgium