Thread: John McCarthy, Pioneer in Artificial Intelligence, Dies at 84

Washington Post article: Stanford professor John McCarthy, father of artificial intelligence, dies in Calif. at age 84 - The Washington Post

I've been wondering who the third one to die would be- first Jobs, then Ritchie, now McCarthy. McCarthy was a pioneer and an innovator in the computing and artificial intelligence world, and he invented lisp. He coined the term "artificial intelligence", and the impact of his contributions will continue to be felt as more advanced AI is built on the foundation that he created.

I've been working in lisp for my AI class, and this news makes all my frustrations seem a little more worthwhile.

(rest (in 'peace))

Lots of Infuriating Single Parenthesis

I remember writing a program in LISP or some other similar language and ended having a dozen or so closing brackets on the last line)))))))))))))).

I think Prolog is the only language I hate more.

I read the news on this earlier. Another sad day.. RIP.

Originally Posted by Junky

Lots of Infuriating Single Parenthesis

I remember writing a program in LISP or some other similar language and ended having a dozen or so closing brackets on the last line)))))))))))))).

I think Prolog is the only language I hate more.

Haha yeah I know the ))) game. It took me a while to realize the "point" of lisp, but in the class I'm taking now, we're doing some pretty cool stuff that wouldn't be possible (or at least nearly as easy) in a different language. For example, lisp treats data and code as more or less the same thing, so you can read data in a way that lets it process itself, which is pretty awesome.

Aw and prolog has its own awesomeness, with all the built in relationship handling it has behind the scenes. The homework that's due today was to write a prolog program that solves one of those "there are 5 people with 5 attributes in 2 categories" (I have no idea how to explain it, but you'd know it if you saw one) logic puzzles, which we previously coded in lisp. Prolog is backward-chaining, so all I had to do was define the relationships and let prolog do the work.

But all that being said, I would never give up Java for lisp or prolog!

Today I also received my IAI (Introduction to Artificial Intelligence) project and later I found out the it's pioneer died. Sad! RIP John!

application context

Originally Posted by daniel.j2ee

Today I also received my IAI (Introduction to Artificial Intelligence) project and later I found out the it's pioneer died. Sad! RIP John!

My undergrad mentor will be teaching an AI class next semester, and she said she was considering using a Java framework instead of the traditional lisp, but when she heard John McCarthy died, she felt like she had to use lisp!

Here's the framework, btw. Pretty interesting: Teaching Introductory Artificial Intelligence through Java-based Games