From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,68b43b837fb71f2a X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-09-17 05:55:52 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!news-hog.berkeley.edu!ucberkeley!nntp-relay.ihug.net!ihug.co.nz!west.cox.net!cox.net!p01!news2.central.cox.net.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3D872658.9050106@telepath.com> From: Ted Dennison User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.0.0) Gecko/20020530 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Thoughts on the recent ICFP contest References: <3D7FFD66.9030805@telepath.com> <3D87059A.6030305@nbi.dk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 12:55:52 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 68.12.51.201 X-Complaints-To: abuse@cox.net X-Trace: news2.central.cox.net 1032267352 68.12.51.201 (Tue, 17 Sep 2002 08:55:52 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 08:55:52 EDT Organization: Cox Communications Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:29070 Date: 2002-09-17T12:55:52+00:00 List-Id: Jacob Sparre Andersen wrote: > Ted Dennison wrote: > >> I was reading over the results of this year's ICFP programming contest >> (http://icfpcontest.cse.ogi.edu/ ) last week. > > >> One thing I started wondering is what libraries would have been needed >> to have been available for someone to complete this project >> competitively in Ada. > > You claim our submission isn't competitive? :-) > > (I am afraid it isn't) Sorry, I didn't know there was an Ada entry. Do you have a web page for it somewhere? >> (1) An inference engine. > > > Maybe. You could do without one without too much trouble. But doing decision logic in procedural programming is a bit slower, and much harder to tune. So I think to get things going quickly, in the "short-long run", an inference engine like CLIPS would save you time. :-) >> (2) High-level socket bindings. > I think the AdaSockets package is sufficient. Hmmm...for this task better than what I was thinking of. You got one up on me there! >> (3) A generic implementation of Dijkstra's Algorithm > I wish somebody had told me of Dijkstra's Algorithm a few weeks ago. When we did something very similar for an AI class 14 years ago, I used it (as did everyone else; it was covered in class). However, I had completely forgotten about it since, and was only reminded by reading over the submission websites. So I won't make the claim that I would have come up with it in your place. What would have been really nifty would have been to have my old project's sources available. The only change needed would have been to the communications code and the AI, so I could have hit the lightning round. But that was back when the only offline media was paper printouts or 9-inch reel taps (which they would never have let me have). I may still have a printout somewhere though...