SPUG: Self-generating code: yea or nay? (was: Dijsktra is Dead)

dancerboy dancerboy at strangelight.com
Tue Aug 13 00:11:58 CDT 2002


At 9:42 PM -0700 8/12/02, Marc M. Adkins wrote:
>  > It sounds like all of the examples of "good" uses of self-generating
>>  code are essentially *compilers* of some sort or other.  Obviously a
>>  compiler is going to generate code:  that's what a compiler does.
>>  That one may write a compiler *in* Perl that compiles *to* Perl may
>>  seem a little twisted and confusing, but really it's no more twisted
>>  than, say, all those C++ compilers out there which were mostly
>>  written in C++.
>
>Artificial Intelligence, particularly Expert Systems, was done in Lisp for
>ever so long because it was possible to construct data structures that were
>then executed.  Rules had to be able to generate more rules for knowledge to
>accumulate.  So is the expert system 'compiling' expertise?

And does this constitute a "good" use of self-generating code?  I 
don't know very much about modern AI techniques, but my (limited) 
understanding is that they rarely use this sort of approach anymore.

I'd be very interested to know more about this:  are there any AI 
experts on this list who would care to comment?

-jason

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