Closed. This question needs to be more focused. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by editing this post.
Closed 7 years ago.
Improve this question
I know that it's still an open problem so I don't expect to see complete answers here. I just want to find some approaches to solve the next problem:
I have a model (assume that is's bot's memory), and different words are associated with different objects in the model. Speaking with the bot is like executing sql-queries with a DB. Language is a very hard formalizable protocol. And we can't just write a million lines of code to implement some real language. But I believe that it's absolutely possible to implement some self-learning mechanism. How can it be implemented? Is it possible to implement learning "from scratch" or "from few basic words"? Just want to hear your ideas.
Actually, English is a very strict language and it's one of the easiest languages for experimenting with AI. Many other languages allow you to change the order of words (for example). And in some cases changed order can change the whole meaning or just add some intonation. I really don't have any ideas how to teach a bot for these things.
The first step, in taking this game to the next level, is ...
...to have a very clear view of prior art!
(and pardon me to say, the question doesn't suggest that you have such an extensive insight into the matter [and you're not alone, count me in ;-)])
Even, and maybe in particular, if your intention is to apply completely novel techniques and models, it seems important to review the literature on current and past practices. Aside from possibly identifying elements that may be adapted or reused in a new implementation, a survey of the domain will provide an keen understanding of the nature of the problem[s].
I've personally tried -on various and multiple occasions!- either the naive approach or the sophomoric approach to tackling broadly-defined problems. With the naive approach, one has but a very slight idea of the true nature and scope of the problem. The sophomoric sees us better equipped with domain knowledge and also with related tools, but this can also be misleading because without a deeper understanding, we tend to mis-read/mis-understand new material offered to us and also misuse some of the tools (a bit like the the fellow who's "good with a hammer" for whom many things look like a nail...)
It is particularly easy to make these mistakes in the field of NLP. That's because
Common sense seems to be all is required: after all a child, who's native tongue is English understands subtleties like
"He's not really an expert"
"He's really not an expert" (small wink at the OP's reference to the ordering of word in the English language)
We live in such exciting times, technology and knowledge wise: Processing power, programming language and tools, mathematical techniques, availability of affordable corpora... to name a few of these things that make this moment in time so special.
Far from me the idea of discouraging you in your chat-bot endeavor, I just hope that this long and generic exposé will encourage to look-before-you-leap, as this will truly save you time in the long run, I think in two ways:
provide you some frames of references (again, even if your intention is to "think outside these boxes")
maybe entice you to redefine the problem, for example by limiting it to particular domains of conversation (sports, or health, or life at a particular university campus...) or by focusing on a particular aspect of the problem (semantic awareness, smooth, natural sounding grammar, use of colloquial forms...)
Good luck ;-)
Check out MegaHAL's implementation for some ideas. We've used a variant of this bot for ages in an IRC channel of ours, and he does on occasion appear to be the intelligent mixture of many of our dominant personalities.
You "train" the bot -
each time the bot answer, you rank (or the tester) the answer - if the answer is good/logical - give high rank, if the answer is bad... low/negative rank.
use the ranking in the future to choose the answer, and this is how the bot learns...
There's a great description of Eliza in Paradigms of AI Programming. You should be able to implement a simple Eliza bot in a few days of work.
This isn't a learning algorithm, but it's surprising how realistic answers can be from something so simple.
You can create your own chat bot on BOT libre, http://www.botlibre.com.
The bots learns, can be trained, can be scripted, and your can program them, or let them program themselves.
Thew site supports embedding your bot on your own site, has REST API access, Android, IRC, Twitter. Free hosting, even for commercial bots.
AIML from the AliceBot project may help you out. It's a whole XML schema (if that doesn't put you off) for the branch of AI its concerned with.
An example from Wikipedia:
<category>
<pattern>WHAT IS YOUR NAME</pattern>
<template>My name is <bot name="name"/>.</template>
</category>
RebbeccaAIML is one quite well documented implementation.
Related
I want to implement a conversation system into my RPG (trying to get advanced AI as possible). Conversation as in, the player types:
"Hi, I would like a beer"
and the bartender would respond with
"Coming right up"
and then hand the player a beer.
I've got some ideas and some things I'd like to try, but first I would like to look at what's already been done. But extensive Googling does not turn up anything, so I'm wondering: has this been done or is there research being done in it? (I know this is very complicated, but I'm willing to give it a shot.)
Sure it has. Have a look at the "Eliza" program and its descendants. There's also a Wiki article on chatterbots that might interest you. Have a look at AIML as a way to represent the rules you might use.
For an advanced design, look up the game "Façade". The game's site describes the technologies used and gives links to relevant papers. There was also recently an extensive article in Gamasutra about this, called Beyond Façade: Pattern Matching for Natural Language Applications.
You may also want to look into the Turing Test and it's relevant scientific following/conferences/publications to see what has been done in the humanizing of AI speech.
Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 6 years ago.
Improve this question
[Objective-C]
Do you still use Styrofoam balls to model your systems, where each ball
represents a class?
Tom Love: We do, actually. We've also done a 3D animation version of
it, which we found to be nowhere near
as useful as the Styrofoam balls.
There's something about a physical,
conspicuous structure hanging from the
ceiling right in the middle of a
development project that's regularly
updated to provide not only the
structure of the system that you're
building, but also the current status
of each one of the classes.
We've done it on 19 projects the last time I've counted. One of them was 1,856 classes, which is big - actually, probably bigger than it should be. It was a big commercial project, so it needed to be somewhat big.
Masterminds of Programming
It is the first time I've read or heard about using styrofoam balls to model classes.
Is that a commonly used technique? And, how does that sort of modeling help us to design better the system?
If you have any photos to share which can show us how the classes are represented it'd be great!
Update: So, it seems that the material most people use is the paper. Styrofoam balls are actually oddballs, not a commonly used technique.
Noticeable techniques:
"paper plates and string" modeling, NealB
Post-it Notes on a whiteboard, Jason
Class-Responsibility-Collaboration cards, duffymo
Sheets of ruled paper taped to the wall, AMissico
Thank you all for the very good answers.
I found a couple of styrofoam models for:
Windows 95
and
Lotus Notes
(if that helps)
Actually, here's a Tom Love case study that shows a couple of his models.
This model may represent the least
expensive CASE tool on the market --
materials cost $20.35. It was more
useful than any CASE tools I have ever
used.
We used it in three important ways.
It fixed the number of classes that we would deliver in the finished
application and we did not allow new
ones to be added, unless existing ones
could be removed.
It was a very useful way to publicly document which classes had
been code reviewed (blue ribbons) and
tested (green ribbons).
It helped everyone understand what was being built and how much time and
effort it takes to do testing,
documentation and code reviews.
Edit: photo of object model
alt text http://img686.imageshack.us/img686/82/stryrofoamobjectmodel.jpg
The styrofoam ball model appears to date back to the mid 1990's - a time when CASE (Computer Aided Systems Analysis)
systems were all the rage.
At that time CASE systems promised significant benefits but were dismally slow,
buggy, unstable, overextended and downright awkward to use. Basically, long on potential but short on delivery.
I remember having a conversation with an analyst working on a different project from mine. Her team had
become so frustrated with their CASE system that they trashed it and resorted to "paper plates and string"
modeling. They reserved a meeting room, removed all the furniture, and laid out their process model using labeled
paper plates with strings (representing data flows) connecting them. She claimed it was much more
useful than the CASE system it replaced.
I suspect that the styrofoam ball model had similar roots.
Using styrofoam balls or paper plates fostered design "buy-in". If a team
finds something to rally around it naturally creates a common design focus. It is simple, concrete and
minimal - using it requires a lot
of face to face interaction and discussion. And that is where the value comes from. I suspect
if you brought a new person into the project and told them to bring themselves up-to-speed by
reviewing the "model" they would be "dead in the water". However, walk them through the
"model" and a real conversation would occur where all the required information need to
perform on the project would be imparted very quickly and efficiently.
Do I think styrofoam balls could become a sustainable modeling tool? No, I don't. They would be a real
pain to keep up to date in a changing environment. They convey little information. There are better tools available
today. And most importantly, if the team you are working with don't "buy" it, and they
probably won't, it will look really stupid - kind of like a sports team mascot, a rallying point
only if the team "buys it".
No, we don't do this. And in my 30-odd year history in the IT industry, I've never heard of anyone doing this.
The only way this could help you design better systems is by:
keeping the class count down since it's hard to build the styrofoam model; and
minimising changes, since updating it would be a serious pain in the rear end.
Other than those two dubious features, I can't see this as being very useful. I'd almost conclude it was some sort of prank. Far better to do some real work, I think.
Seriously, if we tried to model our application with styro coffee cups and straws, our bosses would be calling the men in white coats.
Post-it Notes on a whiteboard seem to be popular in the circles I travel in. Objects go on the Post-Its, and you rearrange them until you get your relationships the way you want em.
And then there are the Color Modeling people who use a 4-pack of colored Post-Its and assign an archetype to each color. It doesn't sound like this is much of an improvement, but standing across a room looking at it, you can tell where there are missing features or unidentified objects in the system.
There is one application to this that I think we tend to forget-- using tools to articulate an architecture comes naturally to us after years in the industry, but there are valuable, albeit less technically-minded, stakeholders who may not grasp vital concepts as readily. It would sometimes be a lifesaver to point to a cluster of balls and say, "This is the Language Processing Model, and if I implement the feature you want, it will have consequences here, here, and here. You can see that there are a lot of balls connected there".
Architects, be they designing buildings or systems, might rely on those tangible models to indoctrinate the check writers into the process.
And I thought that UML was useless. The styrofoam ball model makes UML look positively elegant by comparison.
Ward Cunningham's CRC card idea is more useful, even cheaper, and still retains that tactile quality that Dr. Love was after.
I had never heard of the idea until I read this question. It deserves an up vote for originality. And the "Windows" and "Lotus Notes" pictures are priceless.
Sheets of ruled paper taped to the wall, where each sheet is a component, class, entity, or whatever is needed. Everyone has a pencil.
Everyone can write on them "flushing" out the model during the design meetings. Such as, meeting notes, implemetation notes, new classes, removed classes, reasons why you do not have a particular class, and so on. After the design meeting, the principal designer takes them down and rewrite them, again "flushing" them out with pen in "rough-draft" versions. The designer can then make decisions based on the notes of each sheet, create new sheets for any additional components. Generate topics for next meeting, note any descrepancies, note any design / implementation details needed for coding, or whatever else they need to do.
Repeat the meetings until everyone is satisfied. Pencil is new stuff, pen is previous items. Once everyone is happy, the designer creates the working-draft, and posts where everyone can see and initial, in pen, their acceptance of the "working-draft".
Nothing is final. Pen versions are "latest" versions. Pencil versions are "work-in-progress" or "draft" versions.
Simple, fast, flexible, no wasting time on the computer, with high visiblity. Working man's Wiki.
No. My team does not do this.
And I am badly tempted to mock with image macros. But I'm contemplating that the idea is silly enough that it is self-mocking.
Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 7 years ago.
Improve this question
What do you do when you encounter a programming problem that is really hard for you to solve, and you have no idea yet?
Usually, how do you solve it at last?
NOTES:
Could someone introduce something about problem solving practice?
If I can, I leave it alone for a while. Often the solution will pop into my head when I least expect it. (If only we always had the luxury of waiting - often we don't.)
Edit: Another hugely useful thing to do is describe the problem to someone else. Even if they can't help, the very act of explaining it to someone who's unfamiliar with the problem will often clarify things in your mind. Sometimes you get straight to a solution that way, without the other person saying a word. 8-)
I just think it over when a pencil and paper.
Break it down into each part
Look at what parts I know
Research parts I don't
Put it all together
Profit
For me the trick is breaking it into manageable bits.
-- Edit
I must agree with the poster above about talking to someone else, as well. Even if you don't have anyone you can talk to, explain it to a fluffy toy, and the answer will often become obvious.
I find using a whiteboard to explain the problem to someone else very useful.
Sometimes I'll search Stack Overflow to see if anyone has encountered the same or a similar problem; if they haven't, I'll sometimes post a question about it.
The book Peopleware put it in a nice way, that despite being a different context also works here.
The manager's function, they write, is
not to make people work but to make it
possible for people to work.
In this case you are your own manager, so its up to you to make it possible for yourself to work. If its something difficult you are struggling with, then you need to listen to yourself.. what is it you need in order to get started solving it.
For me, it can be that a major class in the project has the wrong name and is inelegant. In order to solve the problem in an elegant way these needs to be fixed first, otherwise it will end out as a half baked solution.
10 cents
For many problems, writing unit tests can help. Break it down (as silky suggests) and try writing tests for the various pieces. Then write code to make the tests pass. Check out some of the literature on TDD.
Writing throwaway "spike" code is also a handy way to figure out new things.
Well, it depends on the kind of problem, whether it's something you can research. For the things you can't, often specific design problems where I have problems keeping all the factors in mind at once, I've found two methods to work well:
Get rid of all possible distractions (computer, phone, people), e.g find an empty conference room. Take along pen and paper and draw a free-form diagram of the factors involved in the problem; sometimes tables also work well. I've found that the ability to concentrate hard without distractions and the graphical representation usually enable me to find a solution.
For really hard problems, sleep over it. Maybe that's just me, but I sometimes come up with the best ideas when I think about something in that half-dazed state right before I fall asleep - and strangely, I can always remember them come morning.
I would like to know if there are any tools that can help me model C applications i.e. Functional programming.
E.g. I'm currently building a shared library.
But to communicate my design visually, I need something like UML. I would like to do this so that the person reviewing my design need not read through 100s of pages of functions, variables and so on.
I have read about UML for C, which I'm considering.
If there is anything better out there, please let me know.
The bottom line is to visualize the design of C applications and modules without reading through 100s of pages of text, because it takes time and is difficult for the reviewers.
Any help in this area from the experts here would be much appreciated.
Thanks.
A well written text documentation brings you a far. Much further than any UML diagram could ever achieve.
You should split this in two parts:
What do you want to say?
What's the best way to saying it?
Whatever formalism you use to answer the second part, you should be sure it's not ambigous.
The good of UML is that a lot of semantic is already defined by the language so you don't have to include a definition of what those boxes, lines and arrows mean in a collaboration diagram.
But most importantly, documenting something means create a path for others to understand the subject you are documenting. A very precise description that offers no clue on how to read it is as good as none. So, use UML, Finite state machines, ER diagrams, plain English, whatever you want but be sure to include a logical path that your "readers" can follow to understand what's going on.
I had a friend that was a fan of "preciseness at all cost" and it would ask us to go through all the details before some sort of meaning would emerge.
I once ask him to do this experiment: on his next trip to an unknown city, he would have to carry the most precise map he could get. Much better, he would have to carry a 1:1 map of the city with every single detail exactly reported in scale. That way he couldn't get lost!
He declined but I would love to see him trying to use that map. Just even folding it! :)
Whatever you like. It's not a standard but many devs use it and understand it. If it does help you to communicate with other people and document your work -> its for you. If it just takes too much time and you think it's not effective, drop it. Also, don't bother with all details, as long as it resembles UML and your team can work with it, it's fine.
It's meant to help you, not waste you time.
As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, visit the help center for guidance.
Closed 10 years ago.
Locked. This question and its answers are locked because the question is off-topic but has historical significance. It is not currently accepting new answers or interactions.
Back when I was at school, I remember tinkering with a Mac game where you programmed little robots in a sort of pseudo-assembler language which could then battle each other. They could move themselves around the arena, look for opponents in different directions, and fire some sort of weapon. Pretty basic stuff, but I remember it quite fondly, even if I can't remember the name.
Are there any good modern day equivalents?
I used to have a lot of fun coding my own robot with Robocode in college.
It is Java based, the API is detailled and it's pretty easy to get a challenging robot up and running.
Here is an example :
public class MyFirstRobot extends Robot {
public void run() {
while (true) {
ahead(100);
turnGunRight(360);
back(100);
turnGunRight(360);
}
}
public void onScannedRobot(ScannedRobotEvent e) {
fire(1);
}
}
Just found Light Bot. Program your robot to move around and perform tasks to complete a puzzle. Even includes subroutines. Program the bot by dragging tiles into slots. The game is very polished.
Update Lightbot is now the most recent version of the game, and has versions specifically designed for kids ages 4-8 or ages 9+ (with no upper limit) and also features kind of an if
screen of lightbot 1 http://www.lostateminor.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/light-bot.jpg
I think the original game was called Core Wars (this Wikipedia article contains a lot of interesting links); there still seem to be programs and competitions around, for example at corewars.org. I never had the time to look into these games, but they seem like great fun.
In the flash game Manufactoria you "program" a factory by laying out the conveyor belts and switches in a way that's very similar to a FSM, but more powerful. This game is really great. Give it a try, especially if you're into formal languages and automata!
Manufactoria screen shot http://www.tomdalling.com/wp-content/uploads/manufactoria-bubble-sort.png
A game in which you have to graphically construct and train artificial neural networks in order to control a bug is Bug Brain.
Bug Brain screen shot http://www.infionline.net/~wtnewton/oldcomp/bugbrain.jpg
The game in question was definitely Robowar for the Mac. My son had a lot of fun with it and went on to program real robots.
As mentioned earlier by Proud, there is a wiki page for it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RoboWar
Although there has not been a lot of activity surrounding the game over the last few years, there was a tournament held recently, and there is a yahoo email group.
If you want to step away from your keyboard, Wizards of the Coast relased a game called RoboRally that is a combative programming board game.
http://www.wizards.com/roborally/
http://www.pythonchallenge.com/
highly addictive, and a great way to learn python
I'm surprised that Space Chem isn't mentioned yet. Programming with symbols, but programming nevertheless.
http://spacechemthegame.com/
Another good one is CEEBot. It teaches C / Java style programming in a fun, robot-programming kind of game. It is aimed at 10-15 year olds, but it is a good one.
Colobot
It's usually easy for new programmers to pick up on languages like C++ when you have a strong understanding of Java basics. Colobot allows you to program automated craft using a language almost identical to Java and to move, sense, and manipulate their environment in order to accomplish missions on a dangerous planet.
I was also keen on these kind of games. One modern example which I have used is http://www.robotbattle.com/. There are various others - for example the ones listed at http://www.google.com/Top/Games/Video_Games/Simulation/Programming_Games/Robotics/
Core Wars is the classic, of course. But Rocky's Boots is another one. Imagine! There was a time (1982) when you could sell a commercial game based on logic gates!
If you are willing to look at single player games like Light Bot and Manufactoria then I highly recommend RoboZZle. It has conditional commands which include function calls. This allows for complex stack manipulation. There are thousands of user created puzzles from pathetically obvious to mind blowing enigmas. They have recently added support for smartphones.
I also think The Codex of Alchemical Engineering is worth a look.
I think .NET Terrarium is one of the best 'learn-to-program' games for the .NET platform.
I like Ruby Warrior. It is still somewhat under development, but it is a great game with a clever interface.
Core Wars
There's also mySQLgame, I found it pretty amusing (shortly after finding out I suck).
Here's what Casual Gameplay has to say about it.
Kara is about programming a bug(!) coming up in various versions, e.g. Finite State Machine, Java, Turing Machine, Multithreading
Kara http://www.swisseduc.ch/compscience/karatojava/kara/icons/kara-worldeditor.gif
Planetwars is a game specifically written for Google Ai Contest, bots are controlling fleets for conquering planets, they support many languages
I'd say the most famous programming game there has been is the core wars. I don't know if you can still find active "rings" although there was a lot when I tried it some time ago (4 or 5 years).
I've never heard or Core Wars before, but it looks interesting. I do have to vouch for RoboCode, though. That's fun and challenging, especially if you have a group of people competing against either other.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(computer_game)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_2
There is also a great hacking game the name of which I simply cannot remember. Hrm.
Matt, I think the game you're referring to is CRobots (or one of its clones, perhaps -- my first contact was with PRobots, in Pascal, if I remember correctly). It was a lot of fun.
While it was more logic than programming per se, one I really enjoyed back in elementary school was Rocky's Boots. It had sensors, AND gates, OR gates, NOT gates, wires, timers, and all sorts of other stuff. Fantastic program for teaching a kid logic.
Go to the link and you can still play it!
Carnage Heart for PlayStation was fun. It would let you program little mechs to do battle using a flow diagram.
I have to give a shout out to RobotWar which was the first programming "game" that I played way back in the Apple II days. It was written by Silas Warner of Castle Wolfenstein fame.
I got myself addicted to uplink a few months ago. It's not really coding based, more hacking. It's still fun and super geeky.
Although not strictly programming-based, I enjoyed a lot Robot Odyssey, a game where you wired logic gates to sensors and motors in a robot, to make it move and react to environment, to get out of a city, escaping obstacles. I played in on Apple //e, it was one of the best games on this computer (with Lode Runner! :-)).
You must be thinking of RoboWar. Oh how lovely it is.
Still exists, though the community is slowly dying.
http://robowar.sourceforge.net/RoboWar5/index.html
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/robowar/