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Amzi Prolog becomes open source

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Re: Amzi Prolog becomes open source

#21

Post by microtonal »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #19
nickpsecurity wrote: post #9

So, PROLOG people, how excited should anyone be about this? This vs SWI, Visual Prolog, Prolog in a LISP like Allegro, or alternatives like Mercury. Is this significant in general or just for their community of users?

I'm first of all excited by the fact that this made first page on HN. I didn't realise there was that much interest in Prolog news (as in more than two or three people). Also, having more open-source Prolog engines is a very good thing, both for the language and for the project itself. For the project, it's good because it makes it easier for a community to grow around it. Swi has benefited enormously from its popula…

The problem is there are subtle differences between implementations that bite you in ways you never thought possible, and it's just aaaargh hard to get the same program running in the same way on two different Prologs.

Or even between versions of the same implementation. E.g., I know of one project that sticks with SICStus 3, because in SICStus 4 findall/3 removes blocked goals from copied variables. This system relies quite heavily on blocked goals and working around this change turned out to be too expensive.

(If I recall correctly ;).)

Another example is SWI Prolog diverging from the ISO standard in version 7 (e.g. double quoted strings are now a type on their own, rather than a list of character codes). Luckily, there is a --traditional flag for older code.

In both cases, there are good reasons for the changes, but it makes portability hard.

Edit: wanted to add that this is not intended to be a critique of these particular (great) implementations of Prolog.

Re: Amzi Prolog becomes open source

#22

Post by frik »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #9

So, PROLOG people, how excited should anyone be about this? This vs SWI, Visual Prolog, Prolog in a LISP like Allegro, or alternatives like Mercury. Is this significant in general or just for their community of users?

Triva: IBM Watson uses Prolog for its reasoning.

Re: Amzi Prolog becomes open source

#25

Post by ausjke »

ausjke wrote: post #23

Prolog was the AI language two decades ago, that might be too early then, but does it have a future these days? just curious.

This is a sincere question, I guess you read it and feel negative about it and down voted me?

My classmate used it for his master-degree paper, and I just want to know its status when AI is starting to really catch up these days.

Re: Amzi Prolog becomes open source

#26

Post by pflanze »

ausjke wrote: post #23

Prolog was the AI language two decades ago, that might be too early then, but does it have a future these days? just curious.

I'm not an AI specialist, but to my limited understanding: AI today is mostly machine learning, which means letting an algorithm build classifications from data, and deducting (more like just matching) things from the data that was gained from the learning (basically statistically). Prolog is about writing rules/matches/classifications manually, and then deducting logically from these (not statistically, but precisely). Prolog and other logic languages aren't playing in the same area, and their approach will remain relevant in the future in the areas where they already fit (e.g. expert systems with rules written by humans, writing machine checked mathematical proofs).

Now I should probably recommend you to play a bit with both approaches and do the same myself.

Re: Amzi Prolog becomes open source

#27

Post by ausjke »

pflanze wrote: post #26
ausjke wrote: post #23

Prolog was the AI language two decades ago, that might be too early then, but does it have a future these days? just curious.

I'm not an AI specialist, but to my limited understanding: AI today is mostly machine learning, which means letting an algorithm build classifications from data, and deducting (more like just matching) things from the data that was gained from the learning (basically statistically). Prolog is about writing rules/matches/classifications manually, and then deducting logically from these (not statistically, but precisel…

Very helpful. Prolog is more of an expert system(my classmate used that for smart navigation for big city traffic when GPS was not available then, not sure how that can be done though). AI is more of neural network nowadays that is learning from some sample data set and then make decisions out of that.

Re: Amzi Prolog becomes open source

#28

Post by a-saleh »

ausjke wrote: post #23

Prolog was the AI language two decades ago, that might be too early then, but does it have a future these days? just curious.

I would say that AI eventually went entirely different direction, instead of trying to specify some set of symbolic rules encoding knowledge, we currently throw lots of data at layered neural networks.

So, if prolog has future, it probably is outside of AI research.

I would say, that verifying is one of the places where logic programming never went away. I.e if you ever wanted to write type checker of protocol verification, you might write an embedded prolog first.

Re: Amzi Prolog becomes open source

#29

Post by nickpsecurity »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #20
fusiongyro wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not an expert, but certainly an amateur "Prolog person." Frankly, SWI gets all the action. There are times where it isn't the most efficient Prolog, but the toolset you're going to get from AMZI is much more limited, and that in the end is going to be a bigger deal. Does AMZI have ODBC, CLP, CHR, and a web framework? Probably not. SWI has the biggest community, the largest built-in library, the most 3rd-party package…

>> I went through their "Nani Quest" tutorial and that gave me positive memories of Prolog that I revisited later. Yeah, that's a great tutorial to the language, I learned a buttload from that when I was doing my degree. Not to look down on Learn Prolog Now! and others, but this is how to teach Prolog to university students.

Ok, that's two seconding that one. My references are overloaded as is but I'll add Nani Quest to give to anyone starting with Prolog.

Note: Your alias is hilarious. Nice one.

Re: Amzi Prolog becomes open source

#30

Post by nickpsecurity »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #19
nickpsecurity wrote: post #9

So, PROLOG people, how excited should anyone be about this? This vs SWI, Visual Prolog, Prolog in a LISP like Allegro, or alternatives like Mercury. Is this significant in general or just for their community of users?

I'm first of all excited by the fact that this made first page on HN. I didn't realise there was that much interest in Prolog news (as in more than two or three people). Also, having more open-source Prolog engines is a very good thing, both for the language and for the project itself. For the project, it's good because it makes it easier for a community to grow around it. Swi has benefited enormously from its popula…

That makes sense. Ensuring compatibility and network effects were key attributes successful software in Gabriel's Worse is Better essays. That Prolog implementations have inadvertently sabotaged that effect probably contributes to them being less niche than they would be.

Btw, have you tried Mercury? My last foray into logic programming made it seem like it was killing Prologs in quite a few fronts. Prover work moved onto HOL, Coq, etc. Some people still use it for type-checking and queries. Yet, seems hard for me... not a logic programmer btw... to justify Prolog given capabilities and results from other tools. Any ideas on why it's worth keeping around or would you use an alternative today?

Regarding dissertation, I lost most of life's work when three HD's (main + 2 backups) all died within short time of each other. Encrypted with custom crypto that also fried haha. You can't run something you spent years on and is referenced in your degree. I feel your pain or irritation on that. ;)

Note: Oh shit, it's a Magic the Gathering interpreter! I used to play that every day with friends like a decade ago to pass time at school/work. I even wrote some GUI's and game engines for it but really alpha stuff. Probably would've wrote an AI for it if I didn't discover Starcraft. Might try to read some of it this week if I get spare time even though idk Prolog anymore. Maybe I'll learn something anyway or get some nostalgia at the least. :)

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