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From: siklossy@cs.vu.nl (Laurent Siklossy)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest
Subject: In Defense of FORTRAN
Message-ID: <8711101125.aa00968@livia.cs.vu.nl>
Date: Tue, 10-Nov-87 05:25:52 EST
Article-I.D.: livia.8711101125.aa00968
Posted: Tue Nov 10 05:25:52 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 15-Nov-87 07:28:15 EST
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Approved: ailist@kl.sri.com

FORTRAN and other "standard" programming languages have
been used for years for advanced AI. One of the French AI
pioneers (if not THE pioneer, Ph.D. around 1961(?)),
Dr. Jacques Pitrat, has programmed for years in FORTRAN
with his own extensions. His programs included
discovering interesting logical theorems, learning in
the domain of games (chess), and many other areas. 

Prof. Jean-Louis Lauriere wrote his Ph.D. thesis
(Universite de Paris VI, 1976; see his 100+ pages
article about that in the AI Journal, 1977 I think) in
PL/1. Lauriere's system was, in my opinion, the first
real (powerful) general problem solver, and remains a top
performing system in the field. (Lauriere may have been
pushed into using PL/1 by lack of other more appealing
choices, I cannot remember for sure.)

So it has been done, therefore you can do it too. I would
not recommend it, but that may be a matter of taste or
of limitations.

Laurent Siklossy
Free University, Amsterdam
siklossy@cs.vu.nl

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Ken:

You are welcome to send above via the net if you find
it useful. 

Cheers,    LS
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