> Certainly there are plenty of folks with equal software engineering experience
> to you, advocating the Linux/C++ route (taken in the current OpenCog version)
> rather than the .Net/C# route that I believe you advocate...
Cool. An *argument from authority* without even having an authority. Show me
those "plenty of folks" and their reasons for advocating Linux/C++. Times have
changed. Other alternatives have advanced tremendously. You are out of date
and using and touting obsolete software and development methods. I *don't*
believe that you can find an expert who has remained current on technology who
will back your point.
{NOTE: It's also always interesting to see someone say that the argument is
OS/language vs. framework/language (don't you know enough to compare apples to
apples?)]
More importantly, I don't believe that I've ever explicitly endorsed C#. What
I've always pushed is the .NET framework because 1) it's got far more already
built infrastructure than anything else and 2) you can mix and match languages
so that you can use the most appropriate language in any given place and still
use another language where it is more appropriate.
So, I'll take up your challenge . . . .
I've developed in multiple flavors of Basic, Pascal, Assembly Language, LISP,
Prolog, C, C++, TCl, etc.
For experimental development, C++ is probably the worst choice. It's the old
first-attempt camel you use when you're trying to get speed and object-oriented
programming. The things that you *have* to worry about like memory management
and the errors that you can *easily* make are only offset where speed is truly
a concern. Except that development speed and iteration is more important to
this effort than sheer system speed. Except that the maximum speed-up that you
can get from C++ isn't that great -- and you only get that if you are *really*
good. Why aren't you using C++ only in really core systems and something more
appropriate for development elsewhere? Oh yeah, because there is no really
good way to easily integrate multiple languages like when using .NET.
If you were serious about speed, you'd be using straight C. If you were
serious about development time and ease of development, you'd be using a better
object-oriented language -- or better yet, in many places, a functional
language.
Face it, you're using what you know and what you've *been* developing in -- and
it's obsolete technology . . . . Your systems people are not keeping up as is
REQUIRED to maintain your edge in the systems field.
The newest version of C# now has virtually all of the functional capacity of
OCaml -- or, why not just use F# where appropriate? For web stuff, there's far
more infrastructure available under .NET than is available under any *nix or
Java and if you like the languages available on *nix, there's always IronPython
and Iron Ruby.
I claim as FACT that general development under .NET is at least twice as fast
as in any other environment due to the existing tools and infrastructure.
Can you find anyone who is familiar with both .NET 3.5 and Linux/C++ who is
willing to claim otherwise?
What is your reason for using C++? Other than the fact that porting your
application is going to be expensive, I'm not sure that you have a valid one.
And I'm reasonably sure that the advantages of porting will *rapidly* provide a
return on investment sufficient to offset the porting cost.
So, please, back up your claim. Find some experts who are up-to-date to
explain why Linux/C++ is better.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ben Goertzel" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, May 25, 2008 4:26 PM
Subject: Re: [agi] More Info Please
>> One of the things that I've been tempted to argue for a while is an entirely
>> alternate underlying software architecture for OpenCog -- people can then
>> develop in the architecture that is most convenient and then we could have
>> people cross-port between the two. I strongly contend that the current
>> architecture does not take advantage of a large part of the newest advances
>> and infrastructures of the past half-decade. I think that if people saw
>> what could be done with far less time and code utilizing already existing
>> functionality and better tools that C++ would be a dead issue.
>
> Somehow I doubt that this list will be the place where the endless OS/language
> wars plaguing the IT community are finally solved ;-p
>
> Certainly there are plenty of folks with equal software engineering experience
> to you, advocating the Linux/C++ route (taken in the current OpenCog version)
> rather than the .Net/C# route that I believe you advocate...
>
> -- Ben G
>
>
> -------------------------------------------
> agi
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