[mjn]

In some theoretical sense I agree with that view, but I don't think we're currently at that stage from a practical perspective. Today, the established ASP solvers have performance and expressivity tradeoffs relative to the established SMT solvers. There are some early experiments (like the one I linked) that aim to do things like use SMT solvers as an ASP backend, but they are very much research stage. And they are also (so far) a bit "messy", requiring source-level changes in order to take advantage of Z3, rather than being able to transparently "compile" general ASP programs to take advantage of efficient solvers.

[NotableAlamode]

Intersting. I did not consider the question from a practical POV. What are the main technical impediments with using SMT solvers are ASP backends?