The paper presents the basic concepts of software development of AI systems and the tools existing to help the software developer. The authors use INTERLISP as an example of an AI systems development environment, making comparisons with the tools created to support traditional systems development.

Because of the ambitious scope of the paper, the authors do not give enough emphasis to the AI software development process, making the paper difficult to understand for the neophyte reader. More extensive coverage of this topic would make the paper more valuable, but the two main subjects of the paper, the AI software development process and software development tools, cannot be covered with enough detail in this type of paper.

It was a good idea to use an environment as an example to illustrate the components of a software development environment; however, INTERLISP is neither the best nor the newest environment available. Prolog environments are more representative, but the authors give them little credence. Important points such as the maintenance of AI systems are poorly presented.

There is no conclusion, suggestion, or proposal presented in the paper. However, it provides a good inventory of software development tools and basic concepts of software engineering and AI systems. The writing style is good and suitable for a reader with a basic knowledge of programming and computer systems. The references are excellent. Because of the small number of authors and publications devoted to this topic, the comparison with any related material is insignificant.