alt.hn

7/17/2026 at 11:33:39 PM

The Birth of Prolog (1996)

 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/234286.1057820

by Jtsummers

7/22/2026 at 6:12:13 AM

Prolog (and common lisp) were all the rage for NLP in the 1990s, HPSG systems, le dernier cri, were implemented in them.

what confused me back then and still does is the strict determinism, the fact that program code order defines the output, not the fastest to prove valid binding.

I hoped for sth that would instead be driven by sth like A* guided by probabilities, learned from corpora...

in the early 2000s I then saw research doing exactly that, a* guided search guiding the unification algorithm. I wonder what has become of these approaches. (didn't find the specific paper any more, which to me was one of these sacred moments of reading something hard and useful being well explained, if I find it I'll update. I _believe_ it was from Stanford)

by froh

7/22/2026 at 9:39:52 AM

There is some research around minikanren that touches exactly that (minikanren is akin to prolog written in scheme, where order is just an implementation detail, and cuts and other non-relational things are looked with suspicion).

by harperlee

7/22/2026 at 2:11:54 AM

Programming in Prolog back in the 1980s was a pleasant experience. I wrote some useful programs with Prolog but as I remember that era, the language made a brief splash and soon relegated to niche settings.

Nowadays I enjoy programming in Scheme, which I'd guess is chosen by developers about as often as Prolog. Using Scheme stirs up memories of my Prolog experience. Intuitively it seems like these PLs require or stimulate a similar thinking process that appeals to some of us. I haven't pursued this idea, but it lingers in my brain.

Curiously both PLs were developed in the early 1970s and first official versions released in 1975. Is it possible the authors of Scheme knew about and were influenced by Prolog? Not too likely, but Prolog's creators did spend some time at MIT, the birthplace of Scheme, so the odds are a bit better than 0.

by jrapdx3

7/22/2026 at 6:26:17 AM

To the extent that they are connected it's most likely through Planner: see the OP and the other HOPL2 https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/154766 paper "The Evolution of Lisp" https://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/HOPL2-Uncut.pdf [extended version]. (They also both show up in Donald MacKenzie's Mechanising Proof https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262632959/mechanizing-proof/ https://archive.org/details/mechanizingproof0000mack/ though it doesn't really connect them.)

by leoc

7/22/2026 at 6:10:59 AM

Just heard the Scheme Programming language. Great to know that.

by prabhanjana_c

7/21/2026 at 10:40:59 PM

I discovered Prolog in my youth, and logic has been something of an addiction ever since - not always, I suspect, a particularly useful one.

Lately, though, I have found what may be an antidote in Emacs, Lisp, and functional programming.

Then again, perhaps I have merely traded one elegant addiction for another.

by a9i

7/21/2026 at 11:01:53 PM

Try Haskell.

by anyfoo

7/22/2026 at 8:22:58 AM

The problem is: Haskell is a really, really difficult language. Prolog was much simpler.

Python on the other hand is a pretty simple language. We have different trade-offs here.

by shevy-java

7/21/2026 at 11:20:01 PM

Interesting that Prolog grew out of an NLP project in Marseille rather than a logic-programming research agenda — SLD resolution got attached to it afterward, not the other way round.

by OymInIRole

7/21/2026 at 9:50:26 PM

I actually asked Dr Colmerauer once if the original program code had survived, but sadly he did not believe any of it was still around.

by classichasclass

7/22/2026 at 6:53:54 AM

One of my favourite languages, I even took part in a logic programming competition between universities.

by pjmlp

7/22/2026 at 7:45:15 AM

Same. When I see Prolog mentioned I’m surprised but also happy. More people should know about it. It’s such a fun language to program in because it forces you to think in relationships and facts.

by ratio53

7/22/2026 at 9:52:51 AM

Prolog was weirdly simple to make, once you managed to grasp the concept in its wholeness. Yes I made one in 1982 in Osborne-1. I even managed to include all numbers in the machine into search space, meaning 0 to 0xFFFF -- which real Prologs do not do.

by timonoko

7/22/2026 at 8:15:22 AM

Prolog is strange. On the one hand it makes sense. On the other hand it seems to just be not a very practical language. People don't seem to stay with Prolog whereas they stay, say, in python.

by shevy-java

7/22/2026 at 9:44:54 AM

Prolog is a very practical language for particular tasks. Languages are tools that fill different niches.

Besides, people do stay with Prolog. The language has been going strong for many decades. New Prolog projects pop up often. This can't be said for many other unusual languages, which perished in academic obscurity.

by Antibabelic