From: Joe Chan
Subject: How useful is lisp for ai programming?
Date: 
Message-ID: <3640cc85.1937418@news.force9.net>
The Open University has a course offering units in both Common Lisp
and Prolog for artifical intelligence. I was wondering what the
relative merits of each were for this type of application.

Thanks in advance.

From: Howard R. Stearns
Subject: Re: How useful is lisp for ai programming?
Date: 
Message-ID: <36435789.962A819D@elwood.com>
Joe Chan wrote:
> 
> The Open University has a course offering units in both Common Lisp
> and Prolog for artifical intelligence. I was wondering what the
> relative merits of each were for this type of application.
> 
> Thanks in advance.

http://www.elwood.com/alu/table/compare.htm lists some language
comparisons (alas, non specific to Prolog).  The first listing does
specifically address using Lisp vs. Java, Dylan or C++ for AI work.  The
first Peter Norvig listing also covers using Lisp specifically for AI. 
The introductions of other AI books listed in
http://www.elwood.com/alu/table/books.htm#ai probably also cover this.

Also, check Deja News.  I think that there has been some Prolog vs. Lisp
discussion a while back on comp.lang.lisp
From: Donald Fisk
Subject: Re: How useful is lisp for ai programming?
Date: 
Message-ID: <364367DB.74BA67E7@bt-sys.spamblock.bt.co.uk>
Joe Chan wrote:

> The Open University has a course offering units in both Common Lisp
> and Prolog for artifical intelligence. I was wondering what the
> relative merits of each were for this type of application.

The question you should have asked was "how useful is anything
else?".Both cope well with data structures comprising trees of symbols,
and
both allow you to painlessly build up code as data and then execute it,
both prerequisites for an AI language.

I would say it's not a question of either/or -- you should learn
both if you want to do AI.   However, Prolog is less suitable for non-AI

work, e.g. it's not really comfortable with array processing.

> Thanks in advance.

--
Le Hibou (mo bheachd fh�in: my own opinion)
"it's just that in C++ and the like, you don't trust _anybody_,
and in CLOS you basically trust everybody.  the practical result
is that thieves and bums use C++ and nice people use CLOS."
 -- Erik Naggum
From: Tim Derrick
Subject: Re: How useful is lisp for ai programming?
Date: 
Message-ID: <MPG.10b0e0c7661b6680989687@reading.news.pipex.net>
In article <················@news.force9.net>, ·········@hotmail.com 
says...
> The Open University has a course offering units in both Common Lisp
> and Prolog for artifical intelligence. I was wondering what the
> relative merits of each were for this type of application.

Both are suitable for AI work, mainly because of the ease of building and 
manipulating complex or subtle data structures. The main thing I found in 
trying to do AI was building representations which were sophisticated 
enough to represent what I needed without being so unwieldy as to make 
their manipulation too expensive. For me, I preferred Common Lisp as 
there are more data structuring options, but that is just my personal 
perspective and others I worked with chose Prolog for the same reason.

Both are valuable. I found that learning both enhanced my understanding 
in many unexpected ways. Each has its syntactic and semantic pecularities 
as well as numerous practical considerations in their real everyday use. 
If you get to grips with the realities of both styles (and any others you 
can find) you will benefit more than you initially realise. After 
learning Lisp, I tried writing reasonably pure functional programs in 
ANSI C (yes it can be done) as a technical exercise. Write your own mini-
Prolog in Lisp, and a mini-Lisp in Prolog; then write both in something 
like C++. Get a feel for how these languages really work "under the 
bonnet". I now use C++ almost exclusively, but will never regret learning 
Lisp and Prolog as they still influence how I program even non-AI-related 
stuff.

There are mountains of free downloadable bits of source code for both 
languages available, and it is worth looking at what others have written 
as I learned lots from understanding other people's code.

But do have a look at other languages like ML, Hope, and other functional 
languages too. And look for other logic-based languages. There are 
several if you dig around - logic programing and Prolog *are* distinct, 
and there are alternatives to Resolution+Unification or constraint-based 
approaches as used in Prolog. 

-- 
Tim Chippington Derrick
Opinions expressed above are my own. 
Usual disclaimers apply.
From: Joe Chan
Subject: Re: How useful is lisp for ai programming?
Date: 
Message-ID: <36476801.276896@news.force9.net>
Thanks for all the help from every one. I think I shall have a look at
Common Lisp first then probably Prolog. 

BTW where can I find a Common Lisp interpreter? I am using an
Intel/DOS/Windows 95 platform but suggestions for Linux are also
welcome.

Also where can I find some of the:
>There are mountains of free downloadable bits of source code for both 
>languages available,

Thanks again for everyones help.
From: David B. Lamkins
Subject: Re: How useful is lisp for ai programming?
Date: 
Message-ID: <KqN12.4484$bt4.3120196@news.teleport.com>
In article <···············@news.force9.net> , ·········@hotmail.com (Joe
Chan) wrote:

>Thanks for all the help from every one. I think I shall have a look at
>Common Lisp first then probably Prolog. 
[snip]

>Also where can I find some of the:
>>There are mountains of free downloadable bits of source code for both 
>>languages available,

Start with <http://www.elwoodcorp.com/alu>.

---
David B. Lamkins <http://www.teleport.com/~dlamkins/>
From: ······@cit.org.by
Subject: Re: How useful is lisp for ai programming?
Date: 
Message-ID: <729aif$8hq$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>
In article <···············@news.force9.net>,
  ·········@hotmail.com (Joe Chan) wrote:
> Thanks for all the help from every one. I think I shall have a look at
> Common Lisp first then probably Prolog.
>
> BTW where can I find a Common Lisp interpreter? I am using an
> Intel/DOS/Windows 95 platform but suggestions for Linux are also
> welcome.

Take a look at Corman Common Lisp:
http://www.corman.net/CormanLisp.html
It's free (except IDE with 30 days evaluation period), and quite nice. You can
also download trial versions of Franz Allegro CL and Harlequin LispWorks
through http://www.franz.com and http://www.harlequin.com respectively.

> Also where can I find some of the:
> >There are mountains of free downloadable bits of source code for both
> >languages available,

Go to
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/ai-repository/ai/areas/0.html

Cheers,
     Eugene Zaikonnikov

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