Re:The Simplicity of Prolog
by derdi on Sunday January 26, 2025 @07:03AM
(#42829564)
> Prolog has poor features for abstraction
That's actually what this article presents as its strength and simplicity. The straightforward choice in Prolog is to use global "who may do what" tables. In contrast, the author overengineers a Kotlin solution and then says "look, this is overengineered". I think global tables would make the Kotlin code half as long and much simpler too.
> Mercury and Curry fix some of these limitations
At the cost of introducing new ones. Mercury makes it effectively impossible to pass around partially instantiated structures.
That's actually what this article presents as its strength and simplicity. The straightforward choice in Prolog is to use global "who may do what" tables. In contrast, the author overengineers a Kotlin solution and then says "look, this is overengineered". I think global tables would make the Kotlin code half as long and much simpler too.
> Mercury and Curry fix some of these limitations
At the cost of introducing new ones. Mercury makes it effectively impossible to pass around partially instantiated structures.