[SIGCIS-Members] History of Prolog

McMillan, William W william.mcmillan at cuaa.edu
Wed Mar 30 09:29:55 PDT 2022


Pierre, you mention the use of Prolog in Japan, but IBM was also quite interested in it during the 1980s (I believe in the U.S.).  They had a recruiting table set up at the 1984 ACM Computer Science Conference just to recruit Prolog developers.

You're probably familiar with a Windows-based "Prolog" that was sold under the name Turbo Prolog (possibly from Borland).  I put Prolog in quotes because Turbo Prolog required compile-time variable-type binding, which is good for efficiency, but so inflexible for AI systems that it was useless.

There were several other Prolog implementations, such as Arity Prolog, that were real Prolog, but that had their own extensions to support things like character-based windows for the UI (hot stuff in the 1980s).

I may have docs or info on some of these other Prologs if anyone is interested.

Personal note: Prolog is still the most powerful programming language ever developed.  I found that the number of lines of C or Java code to the number of lines of Prolog code to implement the same functionality (exclusive of the UI) was 10 to 100, depending on the complexity.  But good use of Prolog requires extensive rewiring of the programmer's brain to do anything but simple stuff.

(OK, OK, APL fans, I'll admit you have the same advantage for numerical apps!)

Bill

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From: Members <members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org> on behalf of Pierre Mounier-Kuhn <mounier at msh-paris.fr>
Sent: Wednesday, March 30, 2022 7:58 AM
To: members <members at sigcis.org>
Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] History of Prolog


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Hi all,
Prolog was a programming language based on formal logic, designed in 1972 at the university of Marseille by Alain Colmerauer and his team. It was adopted ten years later in Japan to develop AI systems. Nowadays, it is almost as forgotten as Algol or APL. A conference is planned for November 2022 in Paris to pay hommage to Colmerauer and his work. A Colmerauer Prize Committee is formed, chaired by Prof. em. Robert Kowalski, Distinguished Research Fellow at Imperial College, London.
I would like to know whether people, beyond Colmerauer's circle, have included Prolog, its development and use, in their historical research.
Thanks for your answers!
Best regards,
Pierre Mounier-Kuhn
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