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From: sjs16@itri.bton.ac.uk (Simon John Shurville)
Subject: Re: Smalltalk vs Prolog
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Date: Sun, 26 Nov 1995 13:19:25 GMT
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In article <POSEGGA.95Nov24163848@i12s7.ira.uka.de>
posegga@i12s7.ira.uka.de (Joachim Posegga) writes:

> Well, I disagree here: Prolog is not a declarative language, it can
> just be used declaratively (whatever this exactly means ...) if one
> wishes to do so. Even then, considerable knowledge of Prolog's
> underlying execution model is needed for "serious" programming.

Exactly, when I teach Prolog I am almost embarrassed to have to get
people off the ground by saying how declarative the language is and
then to have to 'take the ladder away' as soon as we come on to not( X
= Y), say. 
 
> In fact, I would argue that a procedural interpretation of Prolog is
> much more adequate for its actual use as a programming language. From
> this perspective, Prolog offers depth-first search and backtracking,
> which you don't have in Smalltalk. Smalltalk, on the other hand,
> offers a programmable class hierarchy with inheritance and, what is
> quite important, a reasonable user interface.

Exactly. One day I would love to have the time to look at 'Prolog with
objects' but I don't suppose it offers the backlog of classes that VW,
say, has in stock.
 
>         Joachim.

Simon 
