YLIKOSKI@FINFUN.BITNET (06/22/88)
Date: Tue, 21 Jun 88 02:23 EDT From: YLIKOSKI%FINFUN.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU Subject: AI language To: AILIST@AI.AI.MIT.EDU X-Original-To: @AILIST, YLIKOSKI Distribution-File: AILIST@AI.AI.MIT.EDU In a recent AIList issue, Pat Hayes wished to get a list of desirable features for an AI language. My opinion is that we need new theoretical formalisms for expressing intelligence and the world of a human being for the basis of new AI languages. It seems to me that almost all successful programming languages have a good background formalism. APL has Iverson's array notation. Modern Lisp (CommonLOOPS and Zetalisp) has several ones: functional programming, the idea of the list, object-oriented programming. The Algol/Pascal family of languages has the idea of expressing the language unambiguously with the Backus-Naur notation. Andy Ylikoski