I used to use pop11 some time ago in the artificial intelligence arena and I’d like to know if anyone out there is using the pop11 programming language commercially now and if so what for?
Question posted in Artificial Intelligence
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Answers
I have been planning a commercial project for 4 months now, that studies what the user does on a daily/weekly/monthly/yearly basis with their computer, and tries to predict what the user will and/or may need to do next. And it will then automate the process.
This project is in development. If you’re interested; A website and blog will be up by the end of the year, if all goes well…
Never used it myself, but here a quote of what Aaron Sloman wrote (Poplog is the complete system, which includes Lisp, Prolog and ML compiler written on top of Pop-11 programming language, plus some other packages and libraries):
Note that link above use Citebite service to link directly to quoted passage.
In the past we did use Pop-11 commercially, at least for industrial research prototypes. I would love to be still using Pop-11 today, but I’m put off by the awkward Poplog installation process, which restricted our ability to transfer meaningful results on to others. I attempted a fresh installation myself only recently, but got only the barest basics working[*]; installation has always been a challenge, even during the days Poplog was being actively maintained by Integral Solutions.
The Python language is currently the most obvious language of choice for AI / machine learning and installation is straightforward, for a variety of platforms! The more I learn about Python the more I am reminded of Pop-11.
I notice this thread is a couple of years old – is there anyone else out there still interested enough in Pop-11 to attempt a fresh implementation of the language. Let’s make a version that generates VM-code for the Java virtual machine and/or the Dalvik sub-system. Perhaps http://pyparsing.wikispaces.com/ would be a good starting point. I would welcome Aaron’s opinion on this, are you still involved?
[*] What I really wanted was to get that amazing VED editor running again, ideally under Cygwin-X, but I have deadlines to meet and my hacking time is strictly limited, these days! ~~~
I was unaware of this request for information, and apologise for taking so long to answer (six years???)!
Poplog still works and is available from the Birmingham web site. It can be installed on either 32-bit or 64-bit linux systems, but runs as a 32-bit process. There are installation scripts that have been tested on Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS and Scientific Linux. The installation presupposes that some 32-bit linux packages have already been installed. The scripts for Fedora and Ubuntu do that installation, then invoke a different script that downloads a tar file (about 17MB) then installs it in /usr/local/poplog (about 80MB) and makes a few demos available for testing.
Anyone wishing to install on some other version of linux can use the second script after installing the packages required, as described in this document on installation: Installing Latest Poplog
There is a user forum to which questions, comments, and requests may be directed, available here: https://mailman.cs.bham.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/pop-forum
If necessary email me: a.sloman at cs.bham.ac.uk
PS: In answer to this: “What I really wanted was to get that amazing VED editor running again, ideally under Cygwin-X, but I have deadlines to meet and my hacking time is strictly limited, these days!”
There’s no hope of getting poplog working under Cygwin, because of all the low-level stuff that poplog does (including using its incremental compiler to generate machine code procedures at run time).
However, if you have enough memory and file space to use a virtual linux system (e.g. a lightweight fedora, or something similar, you should be able to install poplog very quickly and have the editor running in a few seconds, provided that you had previously installed the required libraries, which seem to be available for many versions of linux. Go for a 32-bit linux VM to save space and ensure compatibility with 32-bit poplog).