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None of the downvotes were mine btw. :-) He praises Prolog because it was influenced by a logician, so I'm curious what he thinks of Datalog. That is something
by pjungwir 8y ago
None of the downvotes were mine btw. :-)
He praises Prolog because it was influenced by a logician, so I'm curious what he thinks of Datalog. That is something on my radar to read about, but so far I know nothing about it. But I believe it is something like "Prolog for databases." I know Datomic uses it, but it has a long history.
Personally I think relational theory is one of the greatest success stories in all Computer Science, but that doesn't mean it is problem-free. I'd be happy to hear more about its shortcomings, especially as a formal logic.
Anyway, thanks for the conversation! :-)
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoRelational could be non-problem-free from a formal logic perspective and still be perfectly fine for programming. I think that the article was written, if not from EWD's viewpoint, at least with some of his perspective, that programming should be a formal (and formally verified) process, and any deviation from that is rebuked in scathing terms, no matter how pragmatically useful it is. I think that viewpoint is quite short-sighted. Things can be formally flawed (by some standard), and still be perfectly pragmatically useful in a wide variety of situations.