Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!mtunx!lzaz!nitro!prophet
From: prophet@nitro.ATT.COM (Mike Brooks)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Student versions of OPS5
Message-ID: <1392@nitro.ATT.COM>
Date: 5 Apr 88 19:04:25 GMT
References: <1110@pembina.UUCP> <1501@netmbx.UUCP> <27336@aero.ARPA> <1580@netmbx.UUCP> <28259@aero.ARPA>
Reply-To: prophet@nitro.UUCP (Mike Brooks)
Organization: AT&T ISL Lincroft NJ USA
Lines: 40
Keywords: OPS5, IBM PC/XT/AT

In article <28259@aero.ARPA> srt@aero.UUCP (Scott R. Turner) writes:
>In article <1580@netmbx.UUCP> morus@netmbx.UUCP (Thomas Muhr) writes:
>>In article <27336@aero.ARPA> srt@aero.UUCP (Scott R. Turner) writes:
>>>(*) My experience is that most OPS5 programmers (not that there are many) 
>>                                Is this right ? ---^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>>ignore or actively counter the "pick the most specific/least recently used"
>>>rules anyway.
>
>My guess is that there are very few active OPS5 programmers out there.
>For the most part I would say it is a dead language.  It is years out
>of date (in terms of representation power, etc.), has an awkward
>syntax, and promotes a rather strained coding style.  The fact that
>there are only two or three people contributing to this topic should
>give you some idea of how popular it is in regards to the net.

I can't give an exact number for OPS5 programmers (active) who are out here
but I personally have found OPS5 to be a stable and instructive
rule-based programming environment (though not the only one!). 
I am working on a prototype system to handle resource and
activity planning  within a test lab.
Although at first I was a little annoyed by the lacks that I initially 
perceived, I discovered that OPS5, as an environment to learn rule-based
programming, is ideal because it doesn't have nifty full screen user 
interfaces or tons of libraries; it focuses your attention on the real
beef: the innards of the of the system or project at hand.
I find that at times, having so much to choose from confuses the issue
of what needs to be done.
When needs arose for functionality not terribly well handled in OPS5,
it's simply another call to an external procedure which tests for some
measure of success.

I want to stress that I am not advocating OPS5 as a do-all, end-all
tool, just that it is still useful, and if there are any OPS5 or OPS83
programmers out there I would love email from you detailing your
experiences with these *dinosaurs*.



Michael P. Brooks
E-mail: {mtuxo,ihnp4}!attunix!nitro!prophet