[SIGCIS-Members] History of Prolog

[Brian E Carpenter]

On 31-Mar-22 05:29, McMillan, William W wrote:
...
> 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!)

SNOBOL4 also had the reputation for economy of lines of code, and of obscure coding. Easily a factor 10 compared to Algol, and 20 compared to PL/I, for string processing, if I recall correctly. SNOBOL still has its fans, apparently.

Regards
    Brian Carpenter