Re: Controlled natural language for program debugging
Party of Citizens wrote
> We'll try it out on Intro CS at BCIT this winter.
> Can it be taught by teaching machine, using plain English?
No. FactGuru does not "learn" automatically. But
it is fairly easy for a human being to add knowledge
to FactGuru using the available tools -- much easier,
faster, and cheaper than the $10K per page for
translating English to the rules for an expert system
or a logic-based system such as Cyc.
But unlike the kn. base of Cyc, which can support
detailed reasoning, the resulting Factguru kn. base
requires further processing (with considerable human
intervention) before it can be used for reasoning or
computation.
As I said before, don't expect miracles. FactGuru
can be useful as an intermediate stage between
unrestricted natural language and the usual procedural
and declarative languages processed by computers.
However, there is still much more work to be done
before we can have systems that are really easy
to "teach" -- and can really do something useful
with what they "learn".
If you are serious about using FactGuru to represent
the knowledge used in your courses, I suggest that
you contact Doug Skuce at the University of Ottawa
for further information (see the cc list above).
John Sowa