Re: Practicality of functional and logic languages?

Mirek Benes <benes@dcse.fee.vutbr.cs> writes:
>... functional and logic programming languages and their practical
>usability for programming:


eifrig@beanworld.cs.jhu.edu (Jonathan Eifrig) writes:
> 1) Most expert system shells that I've seen have been written in
> Lisp.


True over in the States but I'm not sure over here. I think most European
AI-related products are written in Prolog.


> 3) The Japanese tried to use Prolog as the basis for their much-
> ballyhooed "Forth Generation Computer" project. Granted, this
> never really got anywhere, but, hey, they tried! :-)


But Prolog wasn't to blame: their objectives were much too ambitious.


At my university Prolog is used in a natural language project. The grammar
used is not a toy one but a state of the art one. But Prolog isn't the
only language used in the project. Some stuff is easier to write in
imperative languages.


I believe this is symptomatic for large Prolog programs: they are embedded
in programs written in imperative languages. So the high level stuff in
Prolog and the low level stuff in an imperative language.


Personally I do most of my simpel programs in Prolog or Lisp only because
of the speed in which I can program in these languages. Why spending 2
weeks with an imperative language obtaining a program that is just a
little bit slower (there exist good interpreters nowaddays), if I can
solve the problem in 2 days in Prolog?


If I can only chose out of your alternatives, I will chose (3). Prolog can
be an important mean in developing usable software tools for building
usable software products.
--
Hans de Vreught
hdev@dutiba.twi.tudelft.nl
Delft University of Technology (TWI-ThI)
The Netherlands
--

Return to the comp.compilers page.
Search the comp.compilers archives again.