The Power of Prolog

#1

Post by tosh » Mon, May 21, 2018, 7:23 PM UTC

The Power of Prolog
metalevel.at

Re: The Power of Prolog

#2

Post by triska » Mon, May 21, 2018, 7:34 PM UTC

Thank you very much for the publicity, I greatly appreciate it!

This book has been discussed on HN about one year ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14045987

Since then, I have added the following new chapters:

Prolog Business Cases: https://www.metalevel.at/prolog/business

Sorting and Searching: https://www.metalevel.at/prolog/sorting

Cryptography with Prolog: https://www.metalevel.at/prolog/cryptography

Engineering Aspects: https://www.metalevel.at/prolog/engineering

Artificial Intelligence with Prolog: https://www.metalevel.at/prolog/ai

I have also made many improvements and additions to the other chapters.

Also, I have made almost everything available in a public git repository so that you can track the book's progress and view it offline:

https://github.com/triska/the-power-of-prolog

It is my sincere hope that you find this material useful, and I welcome all suggestions and comments.

Also, thank you very much to all readers for the extremely constructive feedback that I have received in the past year. Your comments have made this work especially worthwhile.

Enjoy!

Re: The Power of Prolog

#3

Post by steve19 » Mon, May 21, 2018, 7:53 PM UTC

triska wrote: post #2

Thank you very much for the publicity, I greatly appreciate it! This book has been discussed on HN about one year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14045987 Since then, I have added the following new chapters: Prolog Business Cases: https://www.metalevel.at/prolog/business Sorting and Searching: https://www.metalevel.at/prolog/sorting Cryptography with Prolog: https://www.metalevel.at/prolog/cryptography Engi…

Very nice book. Do you know what companies are using prolog commercially?

Re: The Power of Prolog

#4

Post by triska » Mon, May 21, 2018, 8:02 PM UTC

steve19 wrote: post #3

triska wrote: post #2

Thank you very much for the publicity, I greatly appreciate it! This book has been discussed on HN about one year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14045987 Since then, I have added the following new chapters: Prolog Business Cases: https://www.metalevel.at/prolog/business Sorting and Searching: https://www.metalevel.at/prolog/sorting Cryptography with Prolog: https://www.metalevel.at/prolog/cryptography Engi…

Very nice book. Do you know what companies are using prolog commercially?

Thank you for the kind words!

Regarding companies that use Prolog, here are a few examples:

A third of all airline traffic is handled by systems that run SICStus Prolog:

https://www.sics.se/projects/sicstus-prolog-leading-prolog-t...

A large portion of the New Zealand stock exchange is powered by Prolog:

https://dtai.cs.kuleuven.be/CHR/files/Elston_SecuritEase.pdf

Oracle uses Prolog in the JVM specification:

https://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se7/html/jvms-0-pr...

IBM has used Prolog for natural language processing in Watson:

https://www.cs.nmsu.edu/ALP/2011/03/natural-language-process...

RedPrairie uses SICStus Prolog for optimization tasks.

Prolog is used for voice processing on the International Space Station.

Re: The Power of Prolog

#5

Post by jaytaylor » Mon, May 21, 2018, 8:03 PM UTC

steve19 wrote: post #3

triska wrote: post #2

Thank you very much for the publicity, I greatly appreciate it! This book has been discussed on HN about one year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14045987 Since then, I have added the following new chapters: Prolog Business Cases: https://www.metalevel.at/prolog/business Sorting and Searching: https://www.metalevel.at/prolog/sorting Cryptography with Prolog: https://www.metalevel.at/prolog/cryptography Engi…

Very nice book. Do you know what companies are using prolog commercially?

Yes Markus does know, and has sprinkled examples throughout the book! One need look no further than the first chapter to find them.

One that was new and interesting to me is that gerritcodereview (by Google) is written in Prolog.

https://gerrit.googlesource.com/gerrit/+/master/prolog/

Re: The Power of Prolog

#6

Post by niklasd » Mon, May 21, 2018, 8:04 PM UTC

steve19 wrote: post #3

triska wrote: post #2

Thank you very much for the publicity, I greatly appreciate it! This book has been discussed on HN about one year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14045987 Since then, I have added the following new chapters: Prolog Business Cases: https://www.metalevel.at/prolog/business Sorting and Searching: https://www.metalevel.at/prolog/sorting Cryptography with Prolog: https://www.metalevel.at/prolog/cryptography Engi…

Very nice book. Do you know what companies are using prolog commercially?

I know that Negota Logic uses Prolog for the reasoning in their Legal Tech app (which is mainly written in Java). Since the app itself has a terrible user experience and looks like stuck in a ninties dystopia, there might be better examples.

Re: The Power of Prolog

#7

Post by guuz » Mon, May 21, 2018, 8:09 PM UTC

Very good material. Prolog (or the ideas behind it) really needs a resurgence.

Re: The Power of Prolog

#8

Post by pjmlp » Mon, May 21, 2018, 8:34 PM UTC

triska wrote: post #4

steve19 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very nice book. Do you know what companies are using prolog commercially?

Thank you for the kind words! Regarding companies that use Prolog, here are a few examples: A third of all airline traffic is handled by systems that run SICStus Prolog: https://www.sics.se/projects/sicstus-prolog-leading-prolog-t... A large portion of the New Zealand stock exchange is powered by Prolog: https://dtai.cs.kuleuven.be/CHR/files/Elston_SecuritEase.pdf Oracle uses Prolog in the JVM specification: https://…

Windows NT used to have a Prolog based system for handling interrupts, not sure how much of it is still relevant on W10.

Re: The Power of Prolog

#9

Post by pjmlp » Mon, May 21, 2018, 8:35 PM UTC

One of my favorite languages, pity that is has had even harder time than Lisp getting mainstream acceptance.

Re: The Power of Prolog

#10

Post by arca_vorago » Mon, May 21, 2018, 8:39 PM UTC

guuz wrote: post #7

Very good material. Prolog (or the ideas behind it) really needs a resurgence.

It's still going strong in the industrial side of things (like SCADA). You just don't hear much about it.