FORTRAN
FORTRAN is the programming Language considered by many to be the
natural successor to LISP and Prolog for A.I. research. Its
advantages include:
1. it is very efficient for numerical computations (many A.I.
programs rely heavily on number-crunching techniques).
2. A.I. problems tend to be very poorly structured, meaning
that control needs to move frequently from one part of a
program to another. FORTRAN provides a special mechanism for
achieving this, the so-called *GOTO statement*.
3. FORTRAN provides a very efficient data structure, the
*array*, which is particularly useful if, for example, one
wishes to process a collection of English sentences each of
which has the same length.
-- Catalogue of Artificial Intelligence Tools,
-- edited by Alan Bundy, second, revised edition,
-- Springer-Verlag 1984, 1986 Contributor: Martin Cherry
Related:
COME FROM n.
A semi-mythical language construct dual to the
`go to' COME FROM <label> would cause the referenced label
to act as a sort of trapdoor, so that if the program ever reached
it control would quietly and automagically be transferred to
the statement following the COME FROM....
Pascal n.
An Algol-descended language designed by
Niklaus Wirth on the CDC 6600 around 1967-68 as an instructional
tool for elementary programming. This language, designed primarily
to keep students from shooting themselves in the foot and thus
extremely restrictive from a general-purpose-programming point of
view, was later promoted as a general-purpose tool and, in fact,
became the ancestor of a large family of languages including
Modula-2 and Ada (see also bondage-and-discipline l
summed up by a devastating (and, in its deadpan way, screamingly
funny) 1981 paper by Brian Kernighan (of K&...
