Mike Dougherty wrote: > After reading Ben's response I had to ask- what possible value would > there be in NOT pre-compiling reusable procedures? Advocating a > strict adherence to a single type of general purpose container when > there is a clear advantage to specialization sounds like idealistic > dogma. When my existence is threatened by nanopathogens, I definitely > want protective AI making decisions that lead quickly to effective > action. Those extra few hundred clock ticks may be the difference > between my continued consciousness and becoming raw material for a > nanoswarm. (Hopefully by the time this scenario is an actual threat I > will have long since moved on to more durable/resilient hardware) > > On 5/30/06, *Yan King Yin* <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote: > > Do you store procedural and declarative in 2 different places? > > It sounds like cheating because you may store the entire procedure > for solving some fixed problems instead of searching for solutions > in the declarative knowledgebase. >
Well, one advantage to using a unitary representation is that it simplifies understanding the interpreter of that representation. True, there are operational advantages to creating specialized representations for specialized purposes (compilation to pseudo-code, machine-code, etc.), and these will speed up the program. They will also make it more difficult to understand or redesign. Rule of thumb: First get it working, doing what you want. Then optimize. When optimizing, first check your algorithms, then check to see where time is actually spent. Apply extensive optimization only to the most used 10% (or less) of the code. If you need to optimize more than that, then you need to either redesign from the base, or get a faster machine. Expect that you will need to redesign pieces so often while in development that it's better to chose the form of code that's easiest to understand, redesign, and fix than to optimize it. Only when development is essentially complete is it time to give optimization for speed or size serious consideration. ------- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
