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From: Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com>
Subject: Re: scripting/extension language for Ada (was : Re: tagged types
 extensions)
Date: 2000/02/09
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In article <wcc3dr2mq9z.fsf@world.std.com>,
  Robert A Duff <bobduff@world.std.com> wrote:
> blaak@infomatch.com writes:
>
> For example, I consider the make files and whatnot that are used to
> build a program and run its regression tests, to be scripts.  But
these
> are long-lived pieces of software, and therefore need to be
> maintainable.  So "easy to write" is mostly irrelevant.
> "easy to understand, and easy to change" are key.

I realized while taking an AI class a while back that make is basicly a
special-purpose AI inference engine. In effect, makefiles constitue the
rules and knowledge base in an expert system that knows how to build a
program.

AI folks will readily admit productivity as measured in SLOC/hour is
*way* lower for expert system development than it is in normal
imperitive languages.

I'm not sure what can be done about this, though. If you were to try to
write something in Ada that was even half as flexible, you'd basicly end
up writing your own custom expert system. In that case you'd be subject
to the same productivity hit, with the inference engine development time
tacked onto the front to boot.

--
T.E.D.

http://www.telepath.com/~dennison/Ted/TED.html


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