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I am currently doing my Honours in Computer Science and taking Artificial Intelligence as a subject. As part of completing the subject I have to develop my own basic intelligent agent.
I have yet to rap my head around what I actually have to do for this project. I am not the most technically gifted programmer and I have no idea of what to do or where to start
Could someone please point me in the right direction as to where to start learning how to develop an Intelligent Agent as well as any possible idea's of what to actually do for a project?
Any VB.net references would be appreciated as well.(I know it's not the best language to develop an IA with, but due to my time constraints this is the programming language I 'feel' most comfortable with)
Thanx in advance
Well, it depends on how you define an agents. For instance a multi-agent simulation (e.g., real time systems with parallel individuals) is inherently different from agent-based modeling (usually a simulation following the discrete time, discrete event paradigms).
From your comments, I think the latter is what you are searching for. In computer science, we have quite a lot of things written already, see the list of available ABM simulation platforms/environments yourself.
I would recommend using Repast (one of the most popular environments, its previous versions also supported VisualBasic what you were searching for), or either NetLogo or Fables (they are both domain-specific languages to do ABM).
To get an overview about ABM, here is a tutorial I wrote about a widely known toy model.
I want to know in which applications/programming domain are most suitable for Smalltalk. Could anyone please provide me some useful links that could answer my query?
Through googling I learned that some companies use it for:
logistics and foreign trade application
desktop, server and script development
data processing and logistics, scripts and presentations
but I cant find documents/research papers that can tell me which programming domain Smalltalk-80 (or Smalltalk) is best suited.
Some of the programming domains are:
- Artificial intelligence reasoning
- General purpose applications
- Financial time series analysis
- Natural language processing
- Relational database querying
- Application scripting
- Internet
- Symbolic mathematics
- Numerical mathematics
- Statistical applications
- Text processing
- Matrix algorithms
I hope you guys can help me. I am doing this for my case study. Thanks in advance.
It's a general purpose programming language. To paraphrase Kent Pitman on the question of what Common Lisp is useful for:
...Please don't assume [Smalltalk] is only
useful for Animation and Graphics, AI,
Bioinformatics, B2B and E-Commerce,
Data Mining, EDA/Semiconductor
applications, Expert Systems, Finance,
Intelligent Agents, Knowledge
Management, Mechanical CAD, Modeling
and Simulation, Natural Language,
Optimization, Research, Risk Analysis,
Scheduling, Telecom, and Web Authoring
just because these are the only things
they happened to list.
It's particularly suited for applications that cannot have downtime - it's quite normal to patch a running server in deep ways (say, by changing the shape of your class) without taking the server down - or systems that are very complex or have rapidly changing requirements.
Smalltalk has quite substantial growth recently in web based applications, thanks to innovations and fresh approaches in Aida/Web, Iliad and Seaside Smalltalk web frameworks.
In general Smalltalk is used for most complex information systems, let me mention just two:
Finance: Kapital, a risk management in JP Morgan
Manufacturing: ControlWorks, for chip manufacturing in AMD
My goal has been to do a brain dump into software. And I have found Smalltalk to be very well suited for that. Smalltalk makes it easy to put my ideas down in code. And it provides feedback to my thinking. The ability to debug infinitely deep at any point in the execution just enhances my understand of the problem to be solved. Then it allows me to carry out my solution most naturally.
Aik-Siong Koh
I'm afraid you will get as many answers as users of Smalltalk. For some it's a "way of life" for others it's a learning process and in the end they "strand" at granddaddy of the OO languages. Some are using their smalltalk as a kind of shell to "IT-problems".
For me the answer is for application development. Now this is definitive a wide field. As you figured out it is used quite "much" in the software for economic stuff. And that is where I'm using it. I've decided to use it for my Web-Development projects which are related to "business".
The domains you named are all suitable for Smalltalk. Smalltalk shows its strengths in development for systems that are engineering-time limited, instead of hardware-limited.
The Seaside web framework allows us to create complex web applications in a fraction of the time needed in other technologies. The Gemstone object-oriented database allows us to nearly ignore persistence issues.
Smalltalk is generally a very expressive, readable, and understandable language. Whenever a large codebase is to be maintained or code needs to be understandable to non-professionals, Smalltalk shines.
»Smalltalk is a vision of the computer as a medium of self expression. … A humanistic vision of the computer as something everyone could use and benefit from. If you are going to have a medium for self expression, programability is key because unless you can actually make the system behave as you want you are a slave to what’s on the machine. So it’s really vital, and so language comes to the for because it’s through language that you express yourself to the machine.« – Elliot Miranda
You can check this link: http://www.clubsmalltalk.org/web/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=183&Itemid=117 this is a compilation of uses of smalltalk in latam.
perhaps another way of answering the question would be by stating what it might not be suitable for. One domain would be where you have "real" real time constraints i.e. you would need to control the garbage collector from kicking off. If I recall IBM's (OTI) Smalltalk embedded had a mechanism for turning off the gc, but IBM dropped that a while ago. The other domain I have not seen much of is cell phone apps. As far as I know none of the viable Smalltalk's can run on Android but that may change. One hears of folks in Squeak/Pharo working on that. I would love to see ST running well on Android. I think that the Android tablet market will be a hot one.
I should conclude by saying that in all the years I have been coding in ST i.e. since 94, I have seen Smalltalk in just about everything else.
I cant find documents/research papers that can tell me which programming domain Smalltalk-80 (or Smalltalk) is best suited.
This is because Smalltalk is not a domain-specific language, but a general purpose language.
Things it has been used for in the past:
- as the operating system system language for personal computers
- writing rich multimedia and near real-time applications, such as sound synthesisers
- very large corporate and government data processing systems, such as the UK's Home Office Large Matter Enquiry System, or many of JPMorgan Chase's financial trading systems
- web applications, such as DabbleDB
- creating complicated development tools, such as IBM's VisualAge IDE
- experimenting and prototyping applications in early-stage development
Generally speaking Smalltalk shines where the systems are complex, development speed is a key factor, and maintainability is going to be a key factor.
I use Smalltalk to create applications to control, manage and distribute multi-platform JavaScript webapps.
This is sort of a "best language" question, but hopefully with enough of a twist to make it worthwhile.
As someone who only uses C and C#, I'm curious to learn a dynamic language to expand my knowledge. I don't know which to choose.
The thing is that my motivation isn't necessarily to create any "real world" projects, or projects that integrate with other systems, but rather just to learn.
With that said, for someone only familiar languages such as those I mentioned, and possibly ignoring obscurity and lack of support..
Which dynamic language would be the biggest departure?
Which would introduce the most novel concepts?
Which is the exemplar of dynamic languages?
I would suggest learning IronPython. As a language it will still be a significant departure for you, but you'll be able to use everything in the .NET framework that you're familiar with. (I usually think it's a good idea to try to vary just one aspect of development radically at a time... work your way through the different aspects one at a time, and you'll always be comfortable with part of what you're doing, which will help you learn the new part more quickly, IMO.)
Also, with C# 4 you'll be able to call into IronPython from your C# code, including using its dynamic features that way.
The functional languages (LISP, Scheme, etc.) are always worth checking out. They may be some of the bigger departures.
JavaScript is a great stepping stone to go from the C arena to the functional arena. From there you can mess around with JQuery, which, although not a language, forces you to do things in non procedural ways.
Another often overlooked language is SQL. It's obviously a niche language, and as Josh points out, not really 'dynamic', but acquiring a deep understanding of they way set based languages work can really progress a coder.
Careful, if you 'Learn' to much you may end up frustrated with the older languages.
Which dynamic language would be the biggest departure?
Which would introduce the most novel concepts?
I guess that would include Scheme, Erlang and Oz
Which is the exemplar of dynamic languages?
I'd say Ruby and Python
I would suggest any Lisp dialect or Smalltalk. These are dynamic and had heavy influence on the design of other, more mainstream languages.
They also include interesting concepts that are not found in other languages.
Another interesting dynamic language to have a look at is Lua.
It is hard to say, it is definitely a matter of personal taste in a lot of ways. I like learning Python but I am sure that you could learn just as many good things from Ruby about a dynamically typed language.
If you are used to C and C# then any dynamically typed language is going to be a departure. So I say you should use Python because that is what I like, and hopefully you will like it too. If you start using it and you hate it then try something else (like Ruby, Perl, PHP, etc.).
I would say that Lisp fits most, if not all, of your criteria. It's definitely a big departure from C/C++ and C#. It has got alot of novel concepts, and many would argue that it's hard to find a more dynamic language.
Barring Lisp, I myself would go for Ruby.
I'm going to have to vote for Common Lisp here. It is a highly dynamic language that can be adapted to just about anything. You get not only functional programming, but also OO, and even procedural if you so desire. And macros in Lisp are very interesting to study, since to my knowledge no other language has its equivalent.
Plus, developing in a functional style tends to help development in other languages as well. For example, I've noticed that I do OO primarily with immutable objects, thanks to concepts influenced by Lisp and Scheme. And with this, I've noticed an improvement in the stability and maintainability of my OO apps. Just my two cents.
I've been a C++ and C# developer for a long time, and recently started experimenting and learning other languages. I played with Ruby for little while and like it, but it wasn't what I wanted.
I ended up choosing Erlang. After reading about Erlang, I've decided that I really wanted to learn it. I'm not learning Erlang with any hopes of getting a job writing Erlang code. I'm learning Erlang only to become a better developer.
I really do like this language so far. It's only been about a month, and the syntax still gets me sometimes, but I can really see the power of the pattern matching and get excited to write it again. I struggled with the concept of everything being non-mutable at first. But this was mostly because I've "grown up" on C# and C++. C# is a great language and has some amazing tools, but you really have fun with some other languages, particularly something like Erlang. Just don't expect to land a job as a full time Erlang developer. (At least not yet).
For anyone curious, my hobby project is multiple player iPhone app connecting to an Erlang server. For a Windows developer, this has been a major change. But it has renewed my passion for programming, which really was my goal.
If you really want to go crazy but want things to at least be slightly familiar (I know that sounds like a contradiction but it's true), look at F#. It's a type-inferred language but it supports a lot of dynamic type properties. It's a functional language built on top of the CLR so you get full use of the .Net object system which is cool. Because it's a functional language, there are enough novel concepts to really work your brain.
If you really want to go for "biggest departure", Clojure might be of interest. It's a Lisp dialect built on the JVM. It's getting some pretty serious attention both in the Java and Lisp world. It might suit your purposes.
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I am convinced that functional programming is an excellent choice when it comes to applications that require a lot of computation (data mining, AI, nlp etc).
Is functional programming being used in any well known enterprise applications or open source projects? How did they incorporate business logic into the functional design?
Please disregard the fact that there are very few people using functional programming and that it's kind of tough.
Thanks
Functional programming languages like Clojure and Scala are good for pretty much anything. As for Haskell, an experienced Haskell programming would probably be able to substitute Haskell with any language for any problem - Efficient or not. I don't know if there is a functional programming language that could be considered /best/ out of all languages for this specific problem, but rest assured it will work and very well at that.
Also, Clojure and Scala are implemented on the JVM. So technically they /are/ on an enterprise platform.
What are business rules if not functions? Application of rules can be expressed as applying a function to a set of data. It can also be combined with polymorphism. e.g. through generic functions (multiple dispatch can be handy, too) and inheritance.
Code is data, data is code, and both should be like water.
From what I've seen, Scala looks like it handles normal Java just fine. Hence, anything that Java can handle for business, Scala could too.
On the .NET side, F# is another great example of a functional language that works fine for "business" applications. To put it simply, F# can do everything C# can do, and more, easier.
But for both of these languages, the "programming in the large" side tends to borrow from OOP. Not that there's anything wrong with mixing things, but perhaps thats not what you asked. If you want to stick to a more functional approach, and say, not use objects, you could run into a bit more hassle because the tooling support won't be on the same level. With languages that easily integrate with .NET/Java, that's not as big an issue.
As far as "is it wise?": That depends on the project, company, and other environmental factors. It seems that a common "enterprise pattern" is that code has to be extremely dumbed down so that anyone can work on it. In that case, you might get people involved who'd think that using a lambda makes it too difficult for others to understand.
But is it wise to use functional programming for a typical enterprise application where there are a lot of business rules but not much in terms of computation?
Business rules are just computation and you can often express them more succinctly and clearly using functional programming.
A growing number of enterprise apps are written in functional languages. Citrix XenDesktop and XenServer are built upon a tool stack written primarily in OCaml. The MyLife people search engine is written in OCaml. We are a small company but all of our LOB software (e.g. credit-card transactions, accounts, web analytics) are written in F#. Microsoft's ads on Bing use F# code. Perhaps the most obvious example is anyone using recent versions of C# and .NET because they are almost certainly using functional concepts (e.g. delegates).
If you mean more exotic functional languages such as Clojure, Scala and Haskell then I believe some people are using them but I do not have any details myself.
More than a year ago I delved a bit into Haskell and also tried a few things that I would regard as a typical business problem (To put it bluntly, given a number of values, what is the correct response?). Hence, I would say, yes, you should be able to model a number of business problems with functional programming.
Personally I couldn't find the same obviousness in Haskell to which I can push a OO + functional approach like with C# , but this could well be because I haven't done much with Haskell and a lot more with C#.
Then there is the thing how to communicate with a customer. My experience is that many of them think in strictly chronological terms, which kind of favours imperative programming. Even when going into models of state changes etc. you can lose the odd customer. Thinking along function compositions and monads that may represent the chronological operations of the business could probably be beyond many,many customers.
Either way, you can find my business-y example here.
I assume when you talk about a lot of business rules you are thinking about application development. Application development in the sense that you want to model a real-world workflow. Unlike vanilla programming, application development involves higher levels of responsibility (particularly for requirement capturing and testing). If so, I strongly suggest to see if you could apply domain-driven development. A natural choice for domain-driven development is an object-oriented approach. This and the fact that a lot of programmers are decent at object-orientated programming is one reason for its popularity in application development. However, this does not mean that real-world, big-scale projects are always written this way (read http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html).
You might want to check out the iTasks system which is a library for the functional language Clean and is designed exactly to express workflow and business processes.
I'm looking at adding scripting functionality to an existing codebase and am weighing up the pros/cons of various packages. Lua is probably the most obvious choice, but I was wondering if people have any other suggestions based on their experience.
Scripts will be triggered upon certain events and may stay resident for a period of time. For example upon startup a script may define several options which the program presents to the user as a number of buttons. Upon selecting one of these buttons the program will notify the script where further events may occur.
These are the only real requirements;
Must be a cross-platform library that is compilable from source
Scripts must be able to call registered code-side functions
Code must be able to call script-side functions
Be used within a C/C++ codebase.
Based on my own experience:
Python. IMHO this is a good choice. We have a pretty big code base with a lot of users and they like it a lot.
Ruby. There are some really nice apps such as Google Sketchup that use this. I wrote a Sketchup plugin and thought it was pretty nice.
Tcl. This is the old-school embeddable scripting language of choice, but it doesn't have a lot of momentum these days. It's high quality though, they use it on the Hubble Space Telescope!
Lua. I've only done baby stuff with it but IIRC it only has a floating point numeric type, so make sure that's not a problem for the data you will be working with.
We're lucky to be living in the golden age of scripting, so it's hard to make a bad choice if you choose from any of the popular ones.
I have played around a little bit with Spidermonkey. It seems like it would at least be worth a look at in your situation. I have heard good things about Lua as well. The big argument for using a javascript scripting language is that a lot of developers know it already and would probably be more comfortable from the get go, whereas Lua most likely would have a bit of a learning curve.
I'm not completely positive but I think that spidermonkey your 4 requirements.
I've used Python extensively for this purpose and have never regretted it.
Lua is has the most straight-forward C API for binding into a code base that I've ever used. In fact, I usually quickly roll bindings for it by hand. Whereas, you often wouldn't consider doing so without a generator like swig for others. Also, it's typically faster and more light weight than the alternatives, and coroutines are a very useful feature that few other languages provide.
AngelScript
lets you call standard C functions and C++ methods with no need for proxy functions. The application simply registers the functions, objects, and methods that the scripts should be able to work with and nothing more has to be done with your code. The same functions used by the application internally can also be used by the scripting engine, which eliminates the need to duplicate functionality.
For the script writer the scripting language follows the widely known syntax of C/C++ (with minor changes), but without the need to worry about pointers and memory leaks.
The original question described Tcl to a "T".
Tcl was designed from the beginning to be an embedded scripting language. It has evolved to be a first class dynamic language in its own right but still is used all over the world as an embeded language. It is available under the BSD license so it is just about as free as it gets. It also compiles on pretty much any moden platform, and many not-so-modern. And not only does it work on desktop systems, there are variations available for mobile platforms.
Tcl excels as a "glue" language, where you can write performance-intensive functions in C while still benefiting from the advantages of a scripting language for less performance critical parts of the application.
Tcl also comes with a first class GUI toolkit (Tk) that is arguably one of the easiest cross platform GUI toolkits available. It also interfaces very nicely with SQLite and other databases, and has had built-in support for unicode for quite some time.
If the scripting interface will be made available to your customers (as opposed to simply enabling your own engineers to work at the scripting level), Tcl is extremely easy to learn as there are a total of only 12 rules that govern the entire language (as of tcl 8.6). In fact, Tcl shines as a way to invent domain specific languages which is often how it is used as an end-user scripting solution.
There were some excellent suggestions already, but I just wanted to mention that Perl can also be called / can call to C/C++.
You probably could use any modern scripting / bytecode language.
If you're willing to put up with the growing pains of a new product, you could use the Parrot VM. Which has support for many, if not all of the languages listed on this page. Unfortunately it's not done yet, but that hasn't stopped some people from using it in a production environment.
I think most people are probably mentioning the scripting language that they are most familiar with. From my perspective, Tcl was designed specifically to interface with C, so your problem domain is tailor-made for the language. However, I'm sure Python, Perl, or Lua would be fine. You should probably choose the language that is most familiar to your current team, since that will reduce the learning time.