Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!udel!gatech!swrinde!pipex!sunic!sics.se!roland
From: roland@sics.se (Roland Karlsson)
Subject: Re: Why hasn't Prolog Taken over the World?
In-Reply-To: helz@ecn.purdue.edu's message of 14 Nov 1994 03:27:32 GMT
Message-ID: <ROLAND.94Nov14142443@zith.sics.se>
Sender: news@sics.se
Organization: Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Kista
References: <3a6lf4$mk5@mozo.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: Mon, 14 Nov 1994 13:24:43 GMT
Lines: 26


> Why hasn't Prolog Taken over the World?

1. You need that AHA experience before you understand how good it is.
   It is much easier to start programming C.  (Why the industry tries
   to use C++ I do not know, it is much much harder to learn than C.)
2. Most Prolog environments are just that - environments.  The Prolog
   query top loop is very nice for debugging and for some applications.
   For most applications though, you need to be able to make small,
   easy to compile stand alone applications.
3. Conservatism.  A company needs some serious motivation before trying
   something new.
4. Prolog has an academic flavour.  Industry tends to look at
   academic work with some amusement.
5. Lack of control over memory allocation.  This is a serious one!
6. It should not!  Different problems needs different tools.  I write all
   my image manipulaton programs in C and all my problem solving 
   in Prolog and almost all my UNIX system tools in csh.


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Roland Karlsson          Inet: roland@sics.se   Telex:    812 6154 7011 SICS
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