Re: How good is Perl for AI?

[toma]

One of problems with this question is that there is rarely consensus on whether or not a problem or a solution is 'AI.' In my experience most AI work is figuring out the right algorithm, not so much coding.

On my last project, I worked with a PhD AI specialist at our corporate labs. He had programmed AI systems in LISP for years. His part of the problem was NLP of PDF documents. He used perl exclusively on our project. I had no influence on this decision since he had already started the project when I learned of it.

Part of the project also required image segmentation. I did that part in C for speed, but I fed the results to a perl program.

Another part of the project required table decomposition. That part of the project was coded in Java.

I was able to attend the lab reviews for this fairly large corporate labs research group. The solutions being sought tended to require natural language processing, visualization, image processing, statistics, and graph theory. The only languages in use were perl, C, and Java. I never heard anyone discuss LISP except as a story from long ago.

It should work perfectly the first time! - toma