What makes AIML so popular?

I can think of several reasons:

[ol]
[li]AIML has been around for a very long time[/li]
[li]AIML has a fairly shallow learning curve[/li]
[li]AIML is associated with one of the longest running, most popular chatbots in the world[/li]
[/ol]

There are other reasons, I’m sure, but those are pretty compelling reasons.

What makes AIML so popular?

1. The Alice bot starter bot.
2. Pandorabots free web host service
3. Other free AIML datasets (i.e. http://square-bear.co.uk/aiml/)

I would add

4. It is an open standard.

5. The existence of many older and more recent AIML interpreters.

6. Besides ALICE, there are other free AIML sets.

7. Pandorabots free hosting service

But

8. It’s really not “so popular” in the grand scheme of things.  There aren’t that many botmasters in the world.

GMTA, Merlin

Thank you everyone. Your comments are very helpful.

Richard Wallace - May 14, 2013:

GMTA, Merlin

For me, it’s the combination of Pandorabots along with AIML that I enjoy.  I find the Training Interface invaluable, especially for beginners.  In many cases, it prevents you from making mistakes and tells you before it saves the changes.

In most instances, it makes it easy to locate errors, or things you’d like to change.  It’s somewhat forgiving, and it frequently produces interesting and unexpected replies.  Most of all, I like the tags, and in particular < people > that flips the pronouns, and <srai> that provides an easy link to similar patterns, or patterns you’d like to incorporate in an existing answer.  For example, visitors commonly say, “Hi, how are you?” or “Hello, what’s your name?”

I think AIML combines saving time with simplicity.