Oh. I should have guessed "practical ai programming" was actually PAIP(Paradigms...). I haven't read PAIP, but have read AIMA, and the topic under discussion occurs in AIMA; so I assumed OP meant AIMA.
My bad for getting the name of the book wrong. I thought of it as PAIP for so long I forget what the actual name is :) Great book though, even for those not especially interested in AI or Lisp
I agree, and relevantly to this post it's a deep book on programming where algorithms and algorithm design do appear but aren't really central. They're an essential part of the toolbox but not the focus.
