andrew@grkermi.UUCP (Andrew W. Rogers) (09/26/85)
I've been wheezing into the recorder for about 15 years now, and havine architecture -- so much so the the fastest Lisps rely on specialized architectures! It seems clear to me that no single existing programming language can be said to provide a ``foundation'' for AI. In fact, the very notion of a programming language providing a foundation for a scientific subject seems to me rather misguided. Does Fortran provide a ``foundation'' for physics? The relation between AI problems, formal descriptions and programming concepts is far too subtle for us to expect a ``foundation'' for AI in a mere programming language. The crusading tone of Hewitt's comments is also rather unsettling. AI researchers will use whatever language they feel most comfortable with for the problem they are working on, without need for any guidance from on high as to the ultimate suitability of that language. If more researchers use Prolog, is that a threat to Lisp users? I