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Why Learn Prolog in 2021?

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Re: Why Learn Prolog in 2021?

#21

Post by triska »

st1x7 wrote: post #14

How do you guys think about the opportunity cost of learning dead/dying/new/unpopular languages? Even with newer languages that are gaining popularity and are likely to be used in the future, I struggle to justify the time investment. I could be wrong but some of my concerns are: - my time is better spent getting deeper into some more popular language that I already know to some extent - unused skills deteriorate wit…

Prolog syntax will always be with us, due to its close relation with first-order predicate logic. This syntax will still be there after many now popular languages will long have been forgotten and replaced with other languages. In this respect, learning it is a safe investment.

Regarding opportunity cost of time investment, also take into account that, even though learning a lower-level language will first save you time in comparison to Prolog, most if not all tasks you solve with lower-level languages will take longer than solving them with Prolog would take.

So, investment in Prolog is like an investment with compound interest: It first takes time, and then you save more and more time, freeing you for other activities.

Re: Why Learn Prolog in 2021?

#22

Post by flubert »

st1x7 wrote: post #14

How do you guys think about the opportunity cost of learning dead/dying/new/unpopular languages? Even with newer languages that are gaining popularity and are likely to be used in the future, I struggle to justify the time investment. I could be wrong but some of my concerns are: - my time is better spent getting deeper into some more popular language that I already know to some extent - unused skills deteriorate wit…

You will not make more money because you learn Prolog. I'd approach it like a hobby. Some people like collecting stamps. Some like pondering esoteric programming languages. With things like Prolog, you are closer to Nature, so to speak. Or maybe more mathematical. Learning about a lot of "modern" technology is a lot like memorizing minutia about the semi-arbitrary choices that have been fossilized and accumulating cruft over time. YMMV.

Re: Why Learn Prolog in 2021?

#23

Post by [deleted] »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #20
st1x7 wrote: post #14

How do you guys think about the opportunity cost of learning dead/dying/new/unpopular languages? Even with newer languages that are gaining popularity and are likely to be used in the future, I struggle to justify the time investment. I could be wrong but some of my concerns are: - my time is better spent getting deeper into some more popular language that I already know to some extent - unused skills deteriorate wit…

I'm curious about this as well, though in a more general sense than just PLs. There are already so many modern/useful things I want to learn that it's hard to justify learning something because it's 'beautiful' or purely intellectually stimulating.

[deleted]

Re: Why Learn Prolog in 2021?

#24

Post by jeofken »

Learning Prolog is a lot of fun! It will not take more than an a day or two - it’s simpler than python.

Download SWI prolog, and get an editor that allows interactive programming with it. Emacs is of course the best for any obscure hacker language, but there may be plug-ins for other editors.

Predicates are like functions but instead of returning you simply leave some parameter as a variable, and the “return value” is prolog finding what the value of that parameter can be.

Making web apps with the built in libraries and library(persistence) is a lot of fun - you can make a real webapp with a relational database with zero dependencies but prolog. Programs are small. Highly recommend for anyone who loves programming.

Only thing I wish for is no effects but instead it being pure like Elm, and a type system rather than runtime type errors.

Re: Why Learn Prolog in 2021?

#25

Post by AnimalMuppet »

st1x7 wrote: post #14

How do you guys think about the opportunity cost of learning dead/dying/new/unpopular languages? Even with newer languages that are gaining popularity and are likely to be used in the future, I struggle to justify the time investment. I could be wrong but some of my concerns are: - my time is better spent getting deeper into some more popular language that I already know to some extent - unused skills deteriorate wit…

Getting deeper into a language you already know has value. On the other hand, learning a new way of thinking about programming also has value. The ideal might be to be T-shaped: deep in one (or a few) languages, but broad at a shallow level.

In this view, you don't have to spend much effort to keep up the skill over time, since you only knew it at a shallow level to begin with.

If you're worried about too many esoteric languages on your resume, don't put them on your resume. You are under no obligation to state everything you know on there...

Is it a distraction? Maybe. Should you make it a serious project? Perhaps not. But there's nothing wrong with stopping and smelling the roses (and the rare languages) every now and then.

Re: Why Learn Prolog in 2021?

#26

Post by AnHonestComment »

st1x7 wrote: post #14

How do you guys think about the opportunity cost of learning dead/dying/new/unpopular languages? Even with newer languages that are gaining popularity and are likely to be used in the future, I struggle to justify the time investment. I could be wrong but some of my concerns are: - my time is better spent getting deeper into some more popular language that I already know to some extent - unused skills deteriorate wit…

I learn a lot of languages, but I don’t try to use them at work — just the ideas from them.

Example: Knowing Haskell makes it easier to understand Promises in JS/TS.

I don’t think learning is a Boolean: I suggest learning a lot of things shallowly to keep practiced at learning, to expose yourself to new concepts, and to have fun playing around.

I always think of it as you want a wide base to draw from, but focus on deep knowledge of only a few.

Re: Why Learn Prolog in 2021?

#27

Post by gota »

st1x7 wrote: post #14

How do you guys think about the opportunity cost of learning dead/dying/new/unpopular languages? Even with newer languages that are gaining popularity and are likely to be used in the future, I struggle to justify the time investment. I could be wrong but some of my concerns are: - my time is better spent getting deeper into some more popular language that I already know to some extent - unused skills deteriorate wit…

Some context on my personal path followed by my considerations:

I've been trying to keep a professional career with parallel academic activities. I.e., I did my masters and Doctorate while working. For both my dissertation and thesis I worked in domains and problems that lend themselves to logical formulations - and most of the implementations I did were in Prolog. I also had minor professional experience with Prolog. Focusing here just on the learning-the-language parts and disregarding all other activities:

* I _absolutely_ could have used that time to learn a more marketable language or framework. So that was a tradeoff, but -

* I most likely would have put only a fraction of those hundreds of hours into "marketable training". I'd have played games for most of them. Or just browsed history channels on youtube, etc.

* I did not feel like any practical skills deteriorated at all. In fact -

* I feel like learning Prolog in-depth was a valuable "exercise in learning". It might have helped me learn hard stuff for my job by making me a better independent student

- I hardly ever interview but I usually let Prolog be at most a footnote in my resume. I don't expect it to be useful in that way (but who knows?)

My takeaway would be - for marketable purposes, learning Prolog is only substitute for meta-training. Like, instead of reading another (not your first!) book about design patterns or asynch control or (...) you could learn Prolog.

But 85% of the benefit in learning it is the intelectual stimulation.

Re: Why Learn Prolog in 2021?

#28

Post by bmitc »

st1x7 wrote: post #14

How do you guys think about the opportunity cost of learning dead/dying/new/unpopular languages? Even with newer languages that are gaining popularity and are likely to be used in the future, I struggle to justify the time investment. I could be wrong but some of my concerns are: - my time is better spent getting deeper into some more popular language that I already know to some extent - unused skills deteriorate wit…

I am learning Prolog because I think I have an idea that I believe might actually be easily solved by Prolog instead of hacking it in some other language. I personally believe in learning paradigms of programming as far more important than languages. Prolog presents the very unique logic programming paradigm. Learning new paradigms always feels a bit mind-bending to me.

Edit: Actually, my last statement may be only in hindsight given that any experienced programmer will know or know of languages like C and Python that aren't mindbending, so one's viewpoint gets slowly skewed. I think that's why sometimes beginners find things like Prolog or other "strange" languages interesting or even easy, and that's because they present a paradigm that is more like like how humans think about certain tasks. Whether it's Prolog and logic, Elixir/Erlang and messaging, F#/Ocaml/SML with pattern matching, etc., these paradigms are actually quite natural to humans who haven't been tainted with paradigms like that of C, which takes on the paradigm of "let's think like a machine".

Re: Why Learn Prolog in 2021?

#29

Post by sls »

qart wrote: post #8

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/

miniKanren is great. Here[1]'s Will Byrd on the difference between it and Prolog.

[1] http://minikanren.org/minikanren-and-prolog.html

Re: Why Learn Prolog in 2021?

#30

Post by wrnr »

st1x7 wrote: post #14

How do you guys think about the opportunity cost of learning dead/dying/new/unpopular languages? Even with newer languages that are gaining popularity and are likely to be used in the future, I struggle to justify the time investment. I could be wrong but some of my concerns are: - my time is better spent getting deeper into some more popular language that I already know to some extent - unused skills deteriorate wit…

Maybe learn something other than a programming language like algebraic geometry, dunno I feel learning only "computable" things is very restrictive because we live in a hyper computable word.
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