RE: Just starting out.. newbie help :)

On Thu, 24 May 2001, Lee Goddard wrote:

> As to doing AI in Perl - you're really much better
> off starting in PROLOG, POP-11, or LISP (in order of
> my personal preference), and then transferring to a
> high-power language like C++ and (ha!) Java. 
> 
> Perl is, to my mind, for all of it's syntactic 
> openness, far too slow for any AI projects involving
> standard techniques like Artificial Neural Networks
> or Genetic Algorithms.

Perl is only slow when you use algorithms that were intended for PROLOG,
LISP, C/C++ or Java.

Correct Perl is usually just as fast. And sometimes faster... for example
the Schwartzian Transform is faster than standard C algorithms for the
same task, because it creates less temporary variables... certainly you
could write the same thing in C, as perl is written in C, but it would not
be easy and clear.

Paris Sinclair