Ask HN: What programming language is Watson written in?

8 points by landon 15y ago ↗ HN

I am very curious about what programming language was used to write the Watson software that IBM used to play Jeopardy. There is a screen of code at 1:49 in this, http://www-943.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/what-is-watson/a-system-designed-for-answers.html video, but I couldn't make out the language and it could just be a filler. Has anybody seen anywhere it was mentioned?

8 comments

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rco8786 15y ago ↗

Looks like some variant of C?

Skywing 15y ago ↗

The screen where the guy is coding on his laptop looks like Java, to me.

Detrus 15y ago ↗

http://www.quora.com/What-language-is-IBM-Watson-programmed-...

Current guess is Java, at least in part.

staunch 15y ago ↗

I can read "Java application" and a "/home/wind(?)/workspace/watson/" path, so it's probably real code and it's written in Java.

rst 15y ago ↗

I'm not sure it's all Java, but there's a lot of Java in there; looking at the systems team pages[1], there's mention of two Apache Java projects, UIMA and Hadoop...

[1] http://www.research.ibm.com/deepqa/systems_team.shtml

swalberg 15y ago ↗

According to http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/Watson+computer+Ot..., it's Java.

solipsist 15y ago ↗

Funny, that particular code from the same video inspired this own post of mine: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2219801

landon 15y ago ↗

Watson was written in mostly Java but also significant chunks of code are written C++ and Prolog, all components are deployed and integrated using UIMA.

http://blog.reddit.com/2011/02/ibm-watson-research-team-answ...