Okay, I think I'm brain damaged -- nope, I figured it out

[Richard Gaskin]

I once had a notion to write a sort of "simple" expert system which 
would analyze scripts according to the rules I look for when doing code 
review manually, and offer suggestions for rewriting things it finds 
which can be better optimized.

But the more I thought about it I quickly realized it's a far from 
"simple" task.

I think of myself as being only reasonably bright, certainly replaceable 
with a well-written script, but there are things even simple-minded 
humans do cognitively that seem easy but are very difficult to transfer 
to a machine too stupid to count past 1.  Not impossible, as we see a 
lot of interesting advancements in AI every year, but certainly more 
work than I can justify attempting.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
  LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
  Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com
  Follow me on Twitter:  http://twitter.com/FourthWorldSys


Roger Eller wrote:

> Yeah.  My latest thoughts on the subject would be having assistive tools in
> the IDE.
>
> ~Roger
> On Sep 14, 2013 1:58 PM, "Mark Wieder" <mwieder at ahsoftware.net> wrote:
>
>> Roger-
>>
>> Saturday, September 14, 2013, 7:31:48 AM, you wrote:
>>
>> > I said this is a naive view, but my vision of LiveCode is that it can be
>> > more efficient by being smarter at the core. Many developers prefer
>> > absolute control, i.e. regular expressions, arrays, etc. but others want
>> a
>> > human syntax to complex operations, and let the engine convert it, if
>> > necessary, to an optimal form for processing. I am one of the others,
>> btw.
>> > :)
>>
>> Much as I like the idea of having the computer do all my thinking for
>> me <g> (shouldn't the engine be capable of determining the best sort
>> algorithm for a given set of data?) I think the overhead of having to
>> make those decisions would probably more than offset any performance
>> gains once the best algorithm was determined.