mark, > What I'd rather do instead is see if we can get a .NET parallel track > started over the next few months, see if we can get everything ported, and > see the relative productivity between the two paths. That would provide a > provably true answer to the debate.
Well, it's an open-source project, so to each his own... However, at this point, folks working on OpenCog stuff under the -- GSoC -- SIAI -- Novamente organizations are going to be working on the current, actually existing C++ implementation.... IMO, the vast majority of work in this sort of project has to do with fiddling with the AI algorithms to make them work right, rather than nuts-and-bolts engineering, so I'm not sure the choice of language is going to make that much difference ... except that with C++ it's obviously more possible to make the code efficient where it needs to be. (Features like template metaprogramming are great but of course one can live without them.) And in the current phase, killer efficiency is not going to make much difference either, while we're still working out algorithm details. The potential for killer efficiency will come into play a little later once the main issue is scaling rather than algorithm refinement. I would much rather see work go into working out the various algorithmic details that are left pending by the OpenCog Prime documentation (not yet released by me, alas... and spending time on these emails doesn't help...) than on reimplementing the same code in multiple programming languages. But as an open-source project there is the opportunity for multiple forks and directions. In the event that a C# fork does get off the ground, it would be nice if things were worked out so that C++ MindAgents could act on the C# core. Ultimately the deeper code goes in the MindAgents not in the core system anyway, in the OpenCog design. If the same MindAgents could be used in both cores then having two cores would not impede development much, and might even accelerate it if it allows developers to do more work in their preferred languages and development environments. -- Ben G ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=103754539-40ed26 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
