In my experience Prolog is best as a user interface. The ability to explore through querying the clauses database and compose and explore different modes without writing throw away code is a real pleasure. Imagine a Prolog style command shell: the datalog semantics compose really well (basis of database queries), the naive search obviates writing throw away functions just for command line use, two way data flow through logical variable and unification significantly reduce the mental load needed to remember variations of function names etc.
It is a pity this is not done more often in practice. It is rather easy to write FFI functions for Prolog if efficiency is a concern. Embedding Prolog style computation inside another language, as the paper has done, seems to me to miss the point. It is the Prolog programming environment that I appreciate the most.
It is a pity this is not done more often in practice. It is rather easy to write FFI functions for Prolog if efficiency is a concern. Embedding Prolog style computation inside another language, as the paper has done, seems to me to miss the point. It is the Prolog programming environment that I appreciate the most.