🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1cr738INNd7b@swan.doc.ic.ac.uk> cdsm@doc.ic.ac.uk (Chris D S Moss) writes:

>Prolog is being used all around the world for real programming
>problems, but the news is not getting out. If you, or your colleagues
>or friends have written a program which has been used for purposes
>small or large, why not take five minutes to record the facts, so that
>others can see what you've done?
>
>We are aiming to create a database of at least ONE THOUSAND Prolog programs 
>which will 
>  * identify the tasks that Prolog is really being used for
>  * enable analysis of the benefits of the language for practical programming
>  * serve as an information exchange for applications

I was a bit baffled to find entries like PARLOG and STRAND-88 in your
excellent list. The STRAND-88 system, for example, is not written in
Prolog (although large parts of the system are written in Strand, which
is a logic programming language). More importantly, I would have to
classify the system as a programming language implementation and not as
an application; if STRAND-88 qualifies then surely so do all Prolog
implementations (most of which will have at least some part written in
Prolog).

While I applaud the objectives and results of the survey I suspect we'd
be better off restricting it to applications other than those which
are implementations of logic programming systems or subsystems. In
particular, I suggest excluding:

	logic programming language implementations and libraries;
	CASE tools for logic programmers;
	development systems for logic programming;
	etc.

I realise that these are all bona fide applications from the
programmer's point of view, but consider the purpose of the database:
it's to help convince sceptics that Prolog has a good track record in
application development, not that it's a good language for writing
other versions of the language in! If I were such a sceptic, flicking
through the list to see what applications had been done in Prolog in my
area of, say, armchair testing, my suspicions would be immediately
aroused by the sight of such "applications" - it would heighten the
perception that Prolog is the sort of language that's only used by
people doing research into Prolog.

Daniel Cohen              Department of Computer Science 
Email: dc@dcs.qmw.ac.uk   Queen Mary and Westfield College
Tel: +44 71 975 5245/4/9  Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK
Fax: +44 81 980 6533      ******* Hit the North!!! *******