3 ms·

You don't seem to know prolog well if you consider more "algorithmic" or "procedural" than, say, smalltalk. Sure, it's not 100% declarative, because even prolog

by c-cube 4y ago

You don't seem to know prolog well if you consider more "algorithmic" or "procedural" than, say, smalltalk. Sure, it's not 100% declarative, because even prolog is bound by such down-to-earth concerns as performance and termination. But there is no such thing as a "function call" in prolog. I for one would like to see you put your claims to the test and implement a prolog in objective-S, indeed. Half of it is backtracking; the other half is unification as the main connector. Good luck.

mpweiher 4y ago
> You don't seem to know prolog well if you consider more "algorithmic" or "procedural" than, say, smalltalk. Actually: I do. Which is why I gave the precise reasons for what I wrote, which in turn your critique does not touch on at all. So again: Prolog is very much a system that computes answers to questions. If you have a Prolog-based system that does not, please point it out to me and I will be happy to have a look. Cheers.
- c-cube 4y ago
  "computes answers to questions" applies to any system with a REPL. That's really not a technical term at all. If you want to be more precise, you could say prolog tries to satisfy the goal it's passed (via unification and resolution). That's not the same as the call/return paradigm. The only unifying concept (heh) for these two is, well, "computes something". Anyway, for me, that confirms that your statements are not grounded in anything but vague terms you throw around, like "algorithmic". If you want to convince people that your flavor of smalltalk is actually, qualitatively _more expressive_ than all the hundreds of other languages, you're going to have to define a precise notion of expressiveness and show that only your system matches it. Since you've recognized that it's just about being more expressive, since you can write anything in any language; you probably also need to have cold numbers on how much more expressive objective-S is.
  - mpweiher 4y ago
    > cold numbers on how much more expressive I'll get on that right after you come up with a quantifiable metric for expressiveness. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

by c-cube 4y ago

mpweiher 4y ago

> You don't seem to know prolog well if you consider more "algorithmic" or "procedural" than, say, smalltalk. Actually: I do. Which is why I gave the precise reasons for what I wrote, which in turn your critique does not touch on at all. So again: Prolog is very much a system that computes answers to questions. If you have a Prolog-based system that does not, please point it out to me and I will be happy to have a look. Cheers.

c-cube 4y ago
"computes answers to questions" applies to any system with a REPL. That's really not a technical term at all. If you want to be more precise, you could say prolog tries to satisfy the goal it's passed (via unification and resolution). That's not the same as the call/return paradigm. The only unifying concept (heh) for these two is, well, "computes something". Anyway, for me, that confirms that your statements are not grounded in anything but vague terms you throw around, like "algorithmic". If you want to convince people that your flavor of smalltalk is actually, qualitatively _more expressive_ than all the hundreds of other languages, you're going to have to define a precise notion of expressiveness and show that only your system matches it. Since you've recognized that it's just about being more expressive, since you can write anything in any language; you probably also need to have cold numbers on how much more expressive objective-S is.
- mpweiher 4y ago
  > cold numbers on how much more expressive I'll get on that right after you come up with a quantifiable metric for expressiveness. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯