🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <2265@mulga.oz> lee@mulga.UUCP (Lee Naish) writes:

>Virtually every time someone posts Prolog code to the network I groan.
>I see code like this:
>
>>merge([],[],[]).
>>merge([],List2,List2):- !, fail.
>>merge(List1,[],List1):- !, fail.
>>merge([Head1|Tail1],[Head2|Tail2],[Head1,Head2|R]):- merge(Tail1,Tail2,R), !.
>
>I wince, I tear my hair out, I fall to my knees and bang my head
>against the nearest rock crying; is this the Prolog code people write?
>What happened to logic programming?  Am I wasting my time?

I must be too old and cynical - whenever I see really bad code, my main
regret is that the authors are not in a class I'm teaching, so I can fail
them on that program.  (We have used large red stamps saying "VOMIT" to
good effect, also...)

I would like to see next editions of Prolog textbooks flush all the hype about
Prolog being "declarative" (whatever that's supposed to mean) and replace
it with sections on good style.  I would like even more to see cuts disappear
from implementations entirely, to be replaced by meta-level capabilities,
but I suppose that's a forlorn hope, since everybody wants "efficiency".

							stan shebs
							shebs@cs.utah.edu