Re: AI, security, just wondering.

[Jon S Anthony <jsa@synquiry.com>]

dewarr@my-dejanews.com writes:

> 
> In article <uf1zn88ijz.fsf@synquiry.com>,
>   Jon S Anthony <jsa@synquiry.com> wrote:
> > You can write anything in anything - theoretically.  But
> you would be
> > digging yourself a large hole for no good reason doing
> this sort of
> > stuff in Ada.  For example, you can write a reasonbly
> featured and
> > quite reasonably efficient Prolog engine in CL in
> something like 4 or
> > 5 pages of (well structured and layed out) code.  An ATN
> is only about
> > a page or so (for examples of both see Paul Grahm's On
> Lisp).  I'm
> > talking about something that's actually useable and
> useful - not just
> > a simple toy.  As a reasonable estimate, doing the same
> thing in Ada
> > would be >> 10 times the effort (though maybe not quite
> 100 times).
> > What's more it wouldn't be much more efficient - if any.
> 
> 
> This is complete nonsense in my view, it is perfectly
> reasonable to program AI problems in Ada. Even if you
> did wish to do it by first writing a prolog interpretor
> (an extremely dubious proposition), it is absurd to say
> that a prolog interpretor written in Ada would be much
> more than 50 pages of code.

The Prolog engine was merely an example and no it is not an
interpreter either. And of course my claim is that it would be rather
more than 50 pages of well structured code - not densed up for effect.
And even if it were not "much more", just being more than 10 times the
amount is a lot more than 10 times the effort (program effort is not
linear with program size - as I'm sure you well know).

Further, I have direct evidence here that the "claims" are far from
nonsense - having done a portion of our current work (in a reasonably
related area) first in Ada and then switching to CL.  Now I consider
myself a pretty good Ada programmer, and a pretty good CL programmer
and I did both and the actual measured difference is as I stated.
That's only one example, but it is at least real evidence and not
nonsense.


> The efficiency claim is also without substance.

Not according to my measurements.  This fact was the final reason for
why we switched from Ada to CL.


/Jon

-- 
Jon Anthony
Synquiry Technologies, Ltd. Belmont, MA 02478, 617.484.3383
"Nightmares - Ha!  The way my life's been going lately,
 Who'd notice?"  -- Londo Mollari