Although not strictly required for work in AI, a few AI oriented languages have proven especially useful in the past: Lisp, Scheme, and Prolog. Scheme is a great language but suffers from an \"embarrassment of riches\": there are almost too many fine implementations available to choose from. That said, I would recommend the excellent and free DrScheme and MzScheme<\/a> as a very good place to start because it is supported by a repository of useful libraries<\/a> that are very easy to install. If you want to mix logic programming with Scheme then the following book (with examples that work with DrScheme) is recommended: The Reasoned Schemer<\/a>
If you want to use Common Lisp (which is what I use for most of my AI development consulting) there are two commercial products that are very good and have free (non-commercial only!) versions: Franz Lisp<\/a> and LispWorks<\/a>. There is no need however to stick just with commercial offerings: SBCL<\/a> (MIT license) and CLisp<\/a> (GPL license) are two good choices among many.<\/p> If you want to use Prolog, the open source (LGPL) SWI-prolog<\/a> and the commercial Amzi Prolog<\/a> are both excellent choices and have lots of third party libraries.<\/p> Scripting Languages<\/span> Pick an environment and stick with it<\/span> So my advice is to spend just a few hours each with a few of my suggestions in order to pick one to learn really well. Once you pick a language stick with it until you master it.<\/p> In the new global economy of driving production and service costs towards zero, it makes a lot of sense for computer scientists to learn specialized skills to differentiate themselves in the marketplace. Since you are reading this blog I assume … Continue reading
I have found two scripting scripting languages to be particularly useful for AI projects: Ruby and Python. Python has more third party libraries and projects for AI but I personally enjoy developing in Ruby.<\/p>
Believe it or not, I tend to follow this advice myself: I tend to use one language for a year or so, and then switch (usually because of customer preference or the availability of a great library written in one specific language). It pays to take the time to master one language and environment, then use that environment a lot.<\/p>![](\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/6782d_9025880770474050744-5042897920870839404?l=artificial-intelligence-theory.blogspot.com\")