Wow! I was trying to create something like this for knowledge representation, last week. Ended up reading some of the CLIPS manual, then deciding to roll my own, as usual.
Wow. Programming is so faddish! I know this, but it's still surprising. What other problems that we're struggling with have been basically solved, in some currently unpopular corner?
Yes, sadly; and this is because programming languages, like spoken languages, live and die by their community. And it's harder to cross-pollinate programming languages since all changes must be backwards-compatible with existing source text. Language interop is usually terrible. You can't easily bring just a bit of Inform into an application.
This is very slowly improving with the popularity of compile-to-llvm, compile-to-CLR, and compile-to-JS as intermediate targets.
The other factor in faddishness is ahistoricity; the most energetic and community-orientated people are young, but interested in building their own new wheels while overthrowing the old wheel order.
> The other factor in faddishness is ahistoricity; the most energetic and community-orientated people are young, but interested in building their own new wheels while overthrowing the old wheel order.
It's easier to write code for a small system than to read code for a large system.
Wow. Programming is so faddish! I know this, but it's still surprising. What other problems that we're struggling with have been basically solved, in some currently unpopular corner?