Sun Yat-Sen

click on one of our sponsors! OR REMOVE ADS

What programming language(s) are most popular in AI circles these days? Any good place on the 'net to learn that language or languages?

SY-S

longshot

Hi again,
You could try this guys personal site.
He's got quite a few links on AI things.

http://www.angelfire.com/hi5/neural...ence/index.html

Donald

longshot

Sorry, forgot to say,
He's obviously into neural network type AI.
Not the rule based stuff.

Robb

ai = cool

dante2

most of the nueral nets I've seen are c++... for a good ai you need a language that is 'close to the metal' to perform well.... if you go to M.I.T's research page (google it) They are doing some impressing stuff...

Sun Yat-Sen

Thanks guys.

In high school I was great at programming--in BASIC. But when I tried to learn C a couple of years ago, I got stuck at the whole "pointer" concept. Something happened to me that has *never* happened--I seemed to hit some sort of wall of understanding. I just couldn't figure out how they worked.

Any help or advice?

I assume "pointers" are still in play in C++ as well...

SY-S

longshot

Hi,
If you can't get your head around pointers, then Java is going to be very strange.
Having said that, there are no pointers in Java.
It's just a totally different concept thinking about objects all the time.
Something I've found a bit difficult having done non-OO for years.

OK, pointers:

Lets start with values.
You have a box, and you can put a number in it.
You give the box a name, for your convenience.
So the box named hieght, has a value in it of 25.

If you have a row of boxes, you can put a number into each.
But what do you call them ?
It would be pretty stupid to name each box with it's own name.
So, name the row of boxes.
So, we now have a row of boxes called, row_of_heights.

So, how do we put numbers into, and get numbers out of, each box.
Two ways:
1)
We use an integer to refer to the Nth box.
So, row_of_heights[2] refers to the box numbered 2 (they go from 0..n).
So, we can say row_of_heights[2] = 25 or hgt = row_of_heights[2]

2)
Instead of using an integer to refer to the Nth box, we have an address.
Now, the boxes address don't go from 0..n, because there are other rows of other things. Like a road in a town.
So the adress has to be a bigger number.
Suppose we put a whole lot of rows of boxes end to end.
Now we have 0..nnnnn, boxes.

So our row_of_heights row of boxes are now at 456..456+n, say.

Now we refer to one of the boxes with this bigger address, that in programming we call a pointer.

Lets call it ptr.
We can set it to 456.
It will point to the first of our boxes.
We can get the values in the box with value = ptr

Now, this is where I keep getting confused with damn C. Do you put *ptr or not. Now I'm onto Java I can't remember.

So, there are two ways to act with ptr.
We can get/set its value (ie change the address)
ie change where it points to - change the box it's pointing to.
Or we can get/set what it points to. ie get/set the value in the box.

Are you loosing the will to live yet ?

I think:

ptr = ptr + 1 changes the address
value = *ptr gets the value in the box.

I always thought that notation in C was stupid.

Does that help ???????

Donald (exhausted).

dante2

very close explanation Donald.

Simply put, a pointer is just that... it is a name given to an address in the computers memory. The important thing to note is that it 'holds' an address... not any value. (It POINTS to a location in memory that has a value in it.)

The * is called the dereferencing operator. Say I had a pointer called ptr and I want the data at the address stored in ptr. I simply use the dereferencing operator with the name of the *ptr.

However, many languages make this more transparent and if you are trying to get into programing you should start with one of those. Java is an excellent place to start. C is handy when you need a language that is 'closer to the metal'.

The important thing is to learn the syntax/concepts of a language well and then study design patterns.

Good luck and if you have any more ?'s post 'em back.

Sun Yat-Sen

I guess I shall learn JAVA.

Is JAVA used for more than just little applets you run from web pages?

SY-S

longshot

YES !

A BIG advantage with Java is that it runs on a Java engine.
There are Java engines for lots of different OSs and machines.
So it's much more portable than C/C++ (duck in case of strong disagreement !)

I think I'm right in saying it's the latest programming language in the Basic/C/C++ line.

Free online Java books:
http://www.roxie.org/books/bleeding/
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/index.html
http://www.javacommerce.com/tutorial/jbook/index.html
http://math.hws.edu/javanotes/
http://www.mindview.net/Books/TIJ/
http://developer.java.sun.com/devel...x.html#contents

Java Ranch
http://www.javaranch.com/

I've got a number of Java books from Amazon.
I can tell you what they are like if you want.

Donald.

Pacemaker

I hear LISP is good for AI.