Why Learn Prolog in 2021?

I was surprised to learn prolog is used in inductive automation's ignition SCADA product when it barfed out a prolog error after I entered an invalid expression. https://inductiveautomation.com/

Re: Why Learn Prolog in 2021?

#7

Post by Jtsummers » Tue, Jan 05, 2021, 11:19 PM UTC

IThinkImOKAY wrote: post #5

Prolog is very bad to learn.

It can be hard to learn, as it's a bit mind bending to think about writing programs more as objectives and relations, than as imperative code. But it's certainly not bad to learn. It's helped me out a few times over the years, using it directly or using the ideas of it for a specific application (sort of a Greenspun's tenth rule applied to Prolog).

Re: Why Learn Prolog in 2021?

#8

Post by qart » Tue, Jan 05, 2021, 11:20 PM UTC

I wonder... is it still justified to learn Prolog now? Aren't there better alternatives for logic programming in many other common programming languages? I mean http://minikanren.org/

Re: Why Learn Prolog in 2021?

#9

Post by dgb23 » Tue, Jan 05, 2021, 11:21 PM UTC

simongray wrote: post #4

This inspired me. What's the best book for modern prolog?

The blog post refers to this:

https://www.metalevel.at/prolog

Re: Why Learn Prolog in 2021?

#10

Post by bmitc » Tue, Jan 05, 2021, 11:23 PM UTC

simongray wrote: post #4

This inspired me. What's the best book for modern prolog?

I recently started going through the book Thinking as Computation: A First Course by Hector Levesque, and I am finding it rather nice. It goes slow, but I like slow. It uses Prolog as the computational implementation of the thesis that presents thinking as computation.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/thinking-computation

Other books I have but haven't gone through yet are Adventure in Prolog and The Art of Prolog.