The Simplicity of Prolog
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The Simplicity of Prolog
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Re: The Simplicity of Prolog
#2> While SQL isn't normally used as a general purpose programming language I think it's quite illustrative for those otherwise unfamiliar with declarative languages (though apparently it is Turing complete)
SQL itself is not Turing complete in its standard form because it lacks some essential features of a Turing machine, such as the ability to simulate unbounded loops or recursion within a single query.
SQL with procedural extensions, such as PL/SQL (Oracle), T-SQL (Microsoft), and PL/pgSQL (PostgreSQL), are Turing complete because they allow constructs such as loops, conditionals, and recursive functions.
Re: The Simplicity of Prolog
#3In a long forgotten past a large part of my graduation was Prolog (I was as far ahead then as i'm behind now with the ol' AI thing; I worked on mixing neural nets, reasoning with uncertainty with Prolog at the time) and, after hallucinatory episodes living, sleeping, (day)dreaming in Prolog for months on end, when something was finished I was always so surprised how clean, readable and 'too little' the code looked for what it did. Once you really grok it, it's a magic tool. I replaced it with Common Lisp after (in my uni, there was no mention of Lisp; we didn't even know it existed basically besides some weird scribbles in papers which were easy enough to study so we didn't give it more thought) and have the same feelings/experiences there but CL is usable for basically anything, including logic programming.
Re: The Simplicity of Prolog
#4> While SQL isn't normally used as a general purpose programming language I think it's quite illustrative for those otherwise unfamiliar with declarative languages (though apparently it is Turing complete) SQL itself is not Turing complete in its standard form because it lacks some essential features of a Turing machine, such as the ability to simulate unbounded loops or recursion within a single query. SQL with proc…
SQL with CTEs is also Turing complete, which is not necessarily ideal. The Rule of Least Power https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_least_power suggests avoiding OP languages. Less powerful languages can be more transparent (great for expressing contracts, e.g. specifications), tractability (proofs, optimization, termination, etc.) and so on. Many systems have been ruined by making them Turing complete.
Re: The Simplicity of Prolog
#5> While SQL isn't normally used as a general purpose programming language I think it's quite illustrative for those otherwise unfamiliar with declarative languages (though apparently it is Turing complete) SQL itself is not Turing complete in its standard form because it lacks some essential features of a Turing machine, such as the ability to simulate unbounded loops or recursion within a single query. SQL with proc…
Using SQL is perfectly fine.
Datalog on the other hand is absurdly hard to work with.
Re: The Simplicity of Prolog
#6I think Lambda Prolog, is the only language that physically hurt my brain... in a good way.
But damn, it felt like an extreme muscle stretching exercise. Painful when doing it, but you feel SO good after :)
Re: The Simplicity of Prolog
#7I have a long standing love affair with Prolog and frustration for its failure to grow. Prolog has poor features for abstraction and is actually not declarative enough!
Prolog's limitations can be great for starting to get the paradigm but then you hit a wall. (Kind of like standard Pascal!)
Mercury and Curry fix some of these limitations as does miniKanren. Integrating CLP is important yet so far always clumsy as standard Prolog provides no way to reify the environment.
Some LP resources:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constraint_logic_programming
Re: The Simplicity of Prolog
#8[dead]
Re: The Simplicity of Prolog
#9> While SQL isn't normally used as a general purpose programming language I think it's quite illustrative for those otherwise unfamiliar with declarative languages (though apparently it is Turing complete) SQL itself is not Turing complete in its standard form because it lacks some essential features of a Turing machine, such as the ability to simulate unbounded loops or recursion within a single query. SQL with proc…
Using SQL is perfectly fine. Datalog on the other hand is absurdly hard to work with.
To each their own.
Others would say datalog elegant and makes it easy to compose statements whereas SQL has an ugly syntax. I mean, ORMs were invented to try to avoid writing SQL but they too have their own problems.
Re: The Simplicity of Prolog
#10I have a long standing love affair with Prolog and frustration for its failure to grow. Prolog has poor features for abstraction and is actually not declarative enough! Prolog's limitations can be great for starting to get the paradigm but then you hit a wall. (Kind of like standard Pascal!) Mercury and Curry fix some of these limitations as does miniKanren. Integrating CLP is important yet so far always clumsy as st…
I take it you have some gripe with https://www.scryer.pl/clpz? Could you explain in more detail?