Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog
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From: conway@mundil.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Thomas Charles CONWAY)
Subject: Re: speed of prolog
Message-ID: <9513910.7841@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU>
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Organization: Computer Science, University of Melbourne, Australia
References: <3pam2e$9jh@chuangtsu.acns.carleton.edu> <Don_Ferguson.3.004B2F22@notes.pw.com> <9513904.29913@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU>
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 00:18:34 GMT
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fjh@munta.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Fergus Henderson) writes:

>Speed is an economic issue.  The choice of language greatly affects the
>economics of producing efficient code.  If efficiency is very important
>to your project, Prolog is not likely to be a good choice.
>

Of course, `efficiency' is a rubbery word. If you mean `high runtime
performance' then I agree, but remember that in many applications,
the important thing is that the software works correctly, and that
it meets its schedule.

One of the good things about LP languages is that they often allow
programmers to write much more functionality in a limited time, though
the resulting executable may be less economical of machine cycles
than the same functionality written in (say) C.

Of course, correctness of Prolog programs is a hard thing to achieve;
on the other hand, correctness of C programs is at least as hard to
achieve, though for different reasons.

>>Good Prolog compilers generate very fast code. 
>
>Name two.

Well if you relax the conditions and say "compilers for logic
programming languages" instead of "Prolog compilers" I could
name one. ;-)

Thomas
