your favourite programming lang?

[Sarum TheBlack]

Originally posted by Arnor2



not the actual joke(dont understand ) but the entire thing

OK, just for you, "The Nerdy Bit (tm)"

Prolog, in some sense, is a "prover" rather than a "do-er" language. The simplest stuff you can do with it is supply some facts eg "car(bmw), car(ford)" (Fords and BMWs are cars), and some simple rules "has_Wheels(X) :- car(X)" (cars have wheels). You can then query the system, and it will attempt to prove what you say, or if you supplied a variable (represented by the first letter being caps) it will try to provide a list of possible matches. So

? car(bmw).

would result in the answer “Yes.”

?car(Zippy).

would give you
Zippy = bmw?
Zippy = ford?

And
?has_wheels(bmw).

Would give “Yes.” (since bmw is a car, and cars have wheels, it logically follows that bmw has wheels)

if the system cannot prove what you asked/said on the information given, it answers No. (note, this doesn't mean the statement is actually wrong, just prolog can't prove it on the information supplied). Eg

?car(honda).
No.

So that's prolog in its simplest form.. given these basic building blocks, and a few other features (and a lot of nifty tricks) it's relatively easy to build half decent AI systems fairly quickly. (my housemates 3rd year project used prolog to write a GO AI.. it was pretty good too, could beat me hands down.)

So in the joke... if information regarding the changing of lighbulbs and the relative numbers of prolog programmers required to do stuff wasn't supplied, prolog would answer "No" to the question. Now I'm explained it.. it's not that funny any more is it?.. Don't worry, I think it's a geek thing.

/end The Nerdy Bit(tm).

 

[Jupitus]

Ummm... you mean noone is using PDP-11 assembler anymore?



Dang! I AM old.....

 

[baphomet]

Originally posted by klavrynd
<shiver>
try to avoid loops cos indentation is a nono

RPG is not an easy language to learn, but it's super fast and super stable.
I've been using it since 1989.
No indentation is not a problem, as the debugger is great and I have utilities to print out code with indentation if necessary.

 

[)nick(]

Actionscript!

Err.. no

C#

Damn, you're still laughing.

 

[old.Gombur Glodson]

Nothing wrong with actionscripting

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

Anyone remember Wang procedure language?

Wang always cracked me up. Their HQ was in Germany and their letter heads all read "Wang Cologne" and they wondered why they had credibility problems in the UK. Then of course there was the U.S. brightspark that came up with the idea of calling their customer service "Wang Care". Oh boy.

Used to do cobol. With a work colleague we did an email system and support tools in RPG and Cobol between us and I used to run a radio station using the email system we wrote.

VB rocks if you first realise its the glue between applications eg you get the dbms (sql,oracle,jet etc)to do the hard work and it controls the interface and links to other apps eg email. Anyone dumb enough to get VB to do the hard work deserves the slow underperforming code they get left with

 

[Nightchill]

fortran

had to be used in my recent Mphys project.

uke:

 

[Tyreus]

C++ no question about it