Mark Watson's "Practical Artificial Intelligence Programming with Java"
Read Chapter 1 on pages 1-4. AI concepts and techniques are learned in two steps: theory, and implementation of theory in programs. AI techniques are difficult to program and can be obscured by the programming details. To make these techniques explicit and to hide the programming details, AI languages, such as Lisp, Prolog, Scheme, and others, have been defined to have language features that directly support the implementation of AI techniques. The use of class libraries and source code libraries serve the same purpose for general-purpose languages, such as C++ and Java. The Watson text uses Java Classes for program examples of AI concepts and techniques. Java, being widely used, has the added advantage of making these techniques more widely available.