50 Years of Prolog and Beyond.
Both logic programming in general, and Prolog in particular, have a long and
fascinating history, intermingled with that of many disciplines they inherited
from or catalyzed. A large body of research has been gathered over the last 50
years, supported by many Prolog implementations. Many implementations are still
actively developed, while new ones keep appearing. Often, the features added by
different systems were motivated by the interdisciplinary needs of programmers
and implementors, yielding systems that, while sharing the “classic” core
language, and, in particular, the main aspects of the ISO-Prolog standard, also
depart from each other in other aspects. This obviously poses challenges for
code portability. The field has also inspired many related, but quite different
languages that have created their own communities.
This article aims at integrating and applying the main lessons learned in the
process of evolution of Prolog. It is structured into three major parts.
Firstly, we overview the evolution of Prolog systems and the community
approximately up to the ISO standard, considering both the main historic
developments and the motivations behind several Prolog implementations, as well
as other logic programming languages influenced by Prolog. Then, we discuss the
Prolog implementations that are most active after the appearance of the
standard: their visions, goals, commonalities, and incompatibilities. Finally,
we perform a SWOT analysis in order to better identify the potential of Prolog,
and propose future directions along which Prolog might continue to add useful
features, interfaces, libraries, and tools, while at the same time improving
compatibility between implementations.
Read in full here:
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