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From: des@jplpro.JPL.NASA.GOV (David Smyth)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog,comp.ai
Subject: Re: Suggestions for Course
Message-ID: <613@devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: Mon, 26-Oct-87 15:44:38 EST
Article-I.D.: devvax.613
Posted: Mon Oct 26 15:44:38 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 28-Oct-87 20:25:32 EST
References: <321@ncrcam.Cambridge.NCR.COM> <589@hubcap.UUCP> <1746@unc.cs.unc.edu>
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Xref: mnetor comp.lang.prolog:424 comp.ai:989

In article <1746@unc.cs.unc.edu> bts@unc.UUCP (Bruce Smith) writes:
>Turbo Prolog for an AI course?  Why not FORTRAN, for that matter?
>Quoting (without permission) from Alan Bundy's Catalog of AI Tools:
>
>	2. AI programs tend to be very poorly constructed, ...
>	           ... 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.

Well, I must admit that I tried exactly this:  I used FORTRASH for
my homework assignments in my "Intro to AI" course.  The professor's
response: "What is this?  Some kind of a joke?"

I explained that SUCKTRAN with a stack is Turing equivalent, and
so there was nothing he could do in Lisp that I could not do in
SUCKTRASH.  Besides, the Lisp system at school ran on one of those
dinosaurs that all the undergrads had to use, so it was predictably
unreliable and SLOW.  I, on the otherhand, had acess to all these
neat-o bitchen machines at work with various FORTRAN viruses,
which both worked and had good response.

It did take me awhile to develop libraries I needed, like
variable length array support (Lisp, at some level, has to
be concerned about running out of contiguous space too, you know -
or didn't you %^)

Anyway, I passed.  Probably got an A too.