11 ms·

What Is miniKanren?

235 points by Bluestein 2y ago

datadrivenangel 2y ago
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- deleted 2y ago
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mentalgear 2y ago
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laidoffamazon 2y ago
Minikanren was the subject of a phenomenal talk by Matt Might for it's applications in medicine [0] https://www.janestreet.com/tech-talks/algorithm-for-precision-medicine/ https://www.janestreet.com/tech-talks/algorithm-for-precisio...
- Bluestein 2y ago
  ... wherein: "It will demonstrate progress to date, including the now-routine use of relational programming in miniKanren to identify personalized treatments for patients with some of the rarest and most challenging diseases in the world." ... wherefrom I cannot help but be amazed at how personalization through data optimization apparently actually helps solve such things and can be an approach.-
- smeej 2y ago
  A couple years ago, I tried to wrap my poor little non-developer head around how to use this, because I have a handful of things going on medically that seem (to me) to be connected, but I can't manage to get any doctors to care enough to help me figure out, but I was hopelessly out of my depth. Normally I can at least figure out how to use something, even if I don't understand how it works under the hood, but with this, I couldn't even figure out the next step.
  - worldsayshi 2y ago
    You might have better luck if you try today using Claude as support?
    - will_byrd 2y ago
      Alas, you'd still need the knowledge graphs. I hope the licensing issues for at least some of the KGs will be resolved soon. It's a tricky issue. Even some of the ontologies and controlled vocabularies in biomedicine can't be released publicly due to copyright restrictions (for example, full SemMedDB uses UMLS which uses SNOMED).
      - worldsayshi 2y ago
        Makes me wonder if LLMs can be used to generate useful KGs (possibly from the right source material).
  - will_byrd 2y ago
    Sorry about that. mediKanren's source code is under MIT license, and is on GitHub. Alas, the knowledge graphs we use for mediKanren aren't produced by us, and often have very complex licenses (one KG might include knowledge from 80 or 100 databases, each with a different license). As a result, we can't just release the KGs that are needed to actually use mediKanren. Also, creating high-quality queries that take into account all the nuances and quirks of the KGs is tricky, and changes as the KGs and the Biolink standard evolve. As a result, mediKanren requires some expertise to use effectively, along with access to the KGs. An application that uses mediKanren as a back-end (along with other reasoners) is the NIH NCATS Biomedical Data Translator: https://ui.transltr.io/ https://ui.transltr.io/ Please keep in mind that both Translator and mediKanren are designed for researchers and for biomedical research, not for patient care or treatment recommendations.
    - smeej 2y ago
      It's surprisingly reassuring to realize it wasn't actually my fault that I couldn't figure it out. Thanks for explaining! I'll look into Translator and see if I can get anywhere that way.
- isoprophlex 2y ago
  That was an incredible read, a real-life Dr. House episode. And very exciting technology, too. Thanks for sharing.
- riffraff 2y ago
  fantastic talk, thanks for sharing.
- dang 2y ago
  Discussed a bit on HN: The Algorithm for Precision Medicine, talk by Matthew Might [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37814662 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37814662 - Oct 2023 (14 comments) The Algorithm for Precision Medicine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29483549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29483549 - Dec 2021 (1 comment)
  - fhe 2y ago
    thank you for posting this... and this is a common enough pattern (looking up previous HN threads on the same or related article) that I wonder if it's worthwhile to automate this.
z5h 2y ago
Implementing and using a miniKanren was fun and enlightening. And it helped me appreciate how incredibly optimized and fast SWI-Prolog is for relational/logical programming. If someone knows of a miniKanren/language combination that outperforms SWI-Prolog and has good developer ergonomics for relational/logical programming, I’d love to hear about it.
- cess11 2y ago
  IIRC SWI-Prolog can be embedded in Python if that's your thing. Interfacing with Scryer Prolog might be require a bit more but ought to be doable, and if they haven't surpassed SWI in some performance metrics yet I'd be surprised. I'm kind of a lisper but I find it easier to get things done in a proper Prolog than the kanrens.
  - upghost 2y ago
    It hasn't been merged into the main branch yet, but you can embed Scryer in Python now[1], and it's quite enjoyable. I've also embedded in Java, Clojure, and elisp[2] :) The Clojure one is bundled up into a library called libscryer-clj, which I haven't released yet, but it operates the same way as libpython-clj[3], libjulia-clj[4], and libapl-clj[5]. As an aside, Scryer is hella ergonomic. clpz+reif is an amazing and amazingly powerful combination, and Scryer's DCG philsophy over double quoted strings is chefs kiss -- it really delivers on the original mission of Prolog. Ediprolog[6] is a fantastic REPL for Emacs. And honestly if you haven't seen Marcus Triska's work[7], by God you are missing out on one of the true joys of life. [1]: https://github.com/jjtolton/scryer-prolog/blob/ISSUE-2464/scryer-prolog-shared-lib-eval-code-c/docs/shared_library/scryer_python.py https://github.com/jjtolton/scryer-prolog/blob/ISSUE-2464/sc... [2]: https://github.com/mthom/scryer-prolog/discussions/2687 https://github.com/mthom/scryer-prolog/discussions/2687 [3]: https://github.com/clj-python/libpython-clj https://github.com/clj-python/libpython-clj [4]: https://github.com/cnuernber/libjulia-clj https://github.com/cnuernber/libjulia-clj [5]: https://github.com/jjtolton/libapl-clj https://github.com/jjtolton/libapl-clj [6]: https://www.metalevel.at/ediprolog/ https://www.metalevel.at/ediprolog/ [7]: https://www.youtube.com/@ThePowerOfProlog https://www.youtube.com/@ThePowerOfProlog
will_byrd 2y ago
Hi! I'm one of the miniKanren peeps. Happy to talk miniKanren and relational programming!
- eihli 2y ago
  Hey! Thanks for all of the work you do. I love reading your stuff. Lately, I've been playing a lot with the code from Neural Guided Constraint Logic Programming for Program Synthesis [1]. I want to apply it to searching for neural network architectures. Something like: (define-relation (layero layer in out) ;; [2] (conde ((== layer `(Linear ,in ,out))) ((== layer `(Relu ,in ,out)) (== in out)) ((fresh (percent) (== layer `(Dropout ,in ,out ,percent)) (== in out) (countero percent) (<o '(1) percent) (<o percent '(0 0 1 0 0 1 1)))))) And a `layerso` that is just a sequence of `layers`. And then use some metric that captures how effective the training run was and use that metric for teaching the search network. I'm sure there's better ways to do it than the way I'm going about it. But it's a fun way to learn a bunch of cool new stuff. Thanks for getting me started down this path! [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.02840 https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.02840 [2] https://github.com/eihli/reason/blob/523920773b7040325c8098a959cfabb12100823b/nas.rkt#L252 https://github.com/eihli/reason/blob/523920773b7040325c8098a...
- anotherhue 2y ago
  Love your talks! The enthusiasm is infectious.
- simonw 2y ago
  I have a feature request for the https://minikanren.org/ https://minikanren.org/ website: just one prominent block of example code on that homepage (as early as possible) would be REALLY useful for helping understand at a glance what kind of language this is. I even clicked through quite a few of those prominent early links and didn't find a code example!
  - ffsm8 2y ago
    Is that even possible for something like this? You've got a pretty long list of implementations, each having its own language specific syntax, e.g. https://github.com/pythological/kanren https://github.com/pythological/kanren for one python version - and there are several Python versions linked on the homepage.
BoingBoomTschak 2y ago
Personally, I wasn't a fan of The Reasoned Schemer's format, https://io.livecode.ch/learn/webyrd/webmk https://io.livecode.ch/learn/webyrd/webmk worked better as my introduction. See also: µKanren (http://webyrd.net/scheme-2013/papers/HemannMuKanren2013.pdf http://webyrd.net/scheme-2013/papers/HemannMuKanren2013.pdf) and various ports like CL (https://github.com/rgc69/si-kanren https://github.com/rgc69/si-kanren) or Clojure (https://github.com/clojure/core.logic https://github.com/clojure/core.logic)
- will_byrd 2y ago
  Here's another miniKanren-related livecode you might enjoy (both are thanks to Nada Amin's cool livecode.io tech!): https://io.livecode.ch/learn/gregr/icfp2017-artifact-auas7pp https://io.livecode.ch/learn/gregr/icfp2017-artifact-auas7pp
  - BoingBoomTschak 2y ago
    Thanks. Personally, I'd love to see more like https://alex-hhh.github.io/2021/08/fish-puzzle.html https://alex-hhh.github.io/2021/08/fish-puzzle.html When I was in university, the usual Prolog example was solving a game of Cluedo.
    - noisy_boy 2y ago
      Is using miniKanren the only way to solve the fish-puzzle? If no, which language will be most ergonomic and accessible to solve it?
      - shakna 2y ago
        Pascal and Common Lisp were employed in the old benchmark assessment [0]. So just about anything should be able to. But I'd expect many solver languages to be able to make it easier, like Prolog, datalog, mercury. [0] http://cse.unl.edu/~choueiry/Documents/Hybrid-Prosser.pdf http://cse.unl.edu/~choueiry/Documents/Hybrid-Prosser.pdf
      - 2y ago
fud101 2y ago
I wish I was smart enough to understand this. I printed out the paper and tried real hard to understand but felt hopelessly out of my depth.
- will_byrd 2y ago
  Hi! Which paper were you trying to read? I'd be happy to try to explain anything you found confusing. Perhaps this online tutorial would be a helpful start: https://io.livecode.ch/learn/webyrd/webmk https://io.livecode.ch/learn/webyrd/webmk
  - layer8 2y ago
    The main problem is likely that many programmers aren’t familiar with Scheme, or any kind of Lisp. So the material is presented in the context of a host language that itself requires substantial effort to really get used to. Personally, while I did some Lisp back in university and was reasonably conversant in it at the time, nowadays whenever something nontrivial is presented in Lisp, it’s just too much mental overhead to get back into it, in addition to trying to understand the thing that is being presented. Terminology like “logic variable” also needs to be explained, if you want to address an audience that isn’t already familiar with logic programming.
    - jasonhemann 2y ago
      One of the hopes is that you can drop in your favorite host language's syntax and get a working implementation. What's your usual language stack these days?
      - markfsharp 2y ago
        I think the initial surface look makes scheme give a bit of an 'oh crap' response. But since minikanren is actually a small program and scheme doesn't really have syntax the language should be less of a problem than initial concerns might make one think. Grokking the actual logic in any language is going to be the bigger challenge. I guess I am trying to encourage just rolling with lisp if you can, but I totally get the initial reactions toward scheme though.
coliveira 2y ago
The important thing is to realize how much programming has been wasted solving problems that can be easily expressed as logic programming and/or integer programming. If you need to solve logic and combinatorial based problems, learning these techniques will save you hundreds of hours.
- thih9 2y ago
  Sounds interesting. Could you give a specific example? Say, in a SaaS web app that provides a comments widget (a Disqus clone), what behavior (user facing or behind the scenes) would be a good candidate to implement with logic/integer programming?
  - pkal 2y ago
    I have a hunch this might be about the difference between "programming" and "coding". Web stuff, Hardware, and other things that don't get to just communicate with other programmers or programmers have a tendency of piling layers upon layers with custom glue and pipes everywhere.
  - riku_iki 2y ago
    There could be library of UI primitives and backend in logical language, then you would write declaration of what you want exactly: - I want window of these size, with such controls - when this button is clicked, text from this control appears in that DB column and system figures out all details making it cross platform, fault tollerant, etc if all infra is coded on that platform
    - jasonhemann 2y ago
      I have a vague recollection about that kind of a declarative UI framework, but I can't remember a single detail. But it's definitely an interesting idea and I know there are other folk out there also interested in your idea.
  - ashton314 2y ago
    AWS uses a SAT solver (Z3) to resolve permissions. I can see miniKanren (or some other logic programming language) being helpful in the realm of authorization.
perching_aix 2y ago
i don't know, but their website doesn't support https at least
- mcmcmc 2y ago
  Why does it need to?
  - jessekv 2y ago
    To protect the users of the site from receiving pages that have been tampered with?
    - scotty79 2y ago
      What was the last time that you got served tampered webpage over http?
      - simonw 2y ago
        Happened to my startup back in ~2012. We had built an iPhone app that retrieved HTML pages from a server, but then scanned for extra metadata that was embedded in HTML comments for things like what navigation options should be displayed to accompany that page. We got a bug report from a user that the app broke when they used it on the free WiFi on the London Underground. It turned out there was some weird proxy running on that WiFi network that stripped HTML comments and injected extra tracking code into pages! Switching to https fixed the bug. I haven't shipped anything that uses plaintext HTTP since then.
        will_byrd 2y ago
        Thank you all for your comments! We are working on a new version of the website, with a new layout, better examples up front, and HTTPS.
      - kazinator 2y ago
        I believe I'm being served tampered content every single time I access HTTP, so the last time that happened coincides with the last time I used a HTTP URL. Here are two hurdles: 1. Can you prove me wrong? 2. Next, given 1, can you rationally justify not rolling out HTTPS everywhere. In other words, is it actually a valid argument that "often, nothing bad happens when you use HTTP, so it is okay". Tampering of content has nothing to do with your privacy; it's a security matter. A nefarious man-in-the-middle could insert content which attacks your browser or redirects it to a malicious site, etc. That attacker could be on a network close to you, or a network close to the site. It's not a matter of trusting or not trusting the original site that serves the HTTP. Therefore it doesn't matter that you're just accessing the site as an anonymous visitor without an authenticated account, just viewing public content.
stalfosknight 2y ago
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- t00 2y ago
  Sadly you're not alone
- sesm 2y ago
  The name pre-dates the Karen stereotype, but IMO the naming clash is beneficial. I won't be surprised if miniKanren implementation for some new language is actually called Karen.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  "Kraken" here, at first. But just me I acknowledge ...
- agumonkey 2y ago
  the 'n' is where the logic comes from
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dankobgd 2y ago
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- kriz9 2y ago
  What would be the benefit of having https for such site?
  - debugnik 2y ago
    Even if you don't care about privacy, every single page using bare HTTP can have HTML or JS injected into it by a third-party. Certain ISPs, hotels and airlines do it to their clients, and the script kiddies messing around the poorly firewalled subnet of their college's AP do it too.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
    It would prevent one’s ISP from injecting advertisements in the HTML as has happened commonly in the past with US ISPs. I presume that has mostly fallen out of practice but one could well blame that on the near-ubiquity of HTTPS.
- exe34 2y ago
  Don't enter your credit card number. Sorted.
- deleted 2y ago
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adamgordonbell 2y ago
Request: I'd love to learn more logic programming, SAT solvers, and equation solvers, but in a language I'm familiar with. Maybe python? But where to start? I played with some Scala mini Karen implementations before, but the ones I tried were all half-baked or non-working.
- will_byrd 2y ago
  You might find Chris Mungall's py-typedlogic interesting: https://py-typedlogic.github.io/ https://py-typedlogic.github.io/
  - adamgordonbell 2y ago
    Thanks! And thanks for miniKanren and reasoned schemer!
- deleted 2y ago
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- debugnik 2y ago
  If you're interested in SMT solvers, the Z3 bindings for Python are very easy to use.
- deleted 2y ago
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- sn9 2y ago
  Hillel Wayne is working on a Logic for Programmers book [0] that might be what you're looking for. [0] https://leanpub.com/logic https://leanpub.com/logic
  - hwayne 2y ago
    The chapters on both constraint solvers and logic programming are pretty short overviews, we're talking less than 15 pages. I wouldn't recommend it if that's what you're specifically interested in. For SAT/SMT in Python, I've heard this book is pretty good: https://theory.stanford.edu/~nikolaj/programmingz3.html https://theory.stanford.edu/~nikolaj/programmingz3.html. Google OR-tools has a Python frontend and they have interactive tutorials (https://developers.google.com/optimization/examples https://developers.google.com/optimization/examples). I don't know about logic programming in Python. Note that while there's some overlap between logic programming and constraint solving ([1] [2]), the communities are pretty independent from each other. Different histories, tools, techniques, etc. [1]: https://www.swi-prolog.org/pldoc/man?section=clpfd https://www.swi-prolog.org/pldoc/man?section=clpfd [2]: http://picat-lang.org/picatbook2015.html http://picat-lang.org/picatbook2015.html
i_love_retros 2y ago
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jasonhemann 2y ago
For folks that want to engage / learn more, there's been an annual miniKanren workshop and also a monthly miniKanren hangout online. Interested folk should totally come to either both!
- lambertsimnel 2y ago
  The website describes the online hangouts as weekly and doesn't list any future dates: http://minikanren.org/#hangouts http://minikanren.org/#hangouts Is there more information somewhere?
  - will_byrd 2y ago
    I haven't held any hangouts online for years, although I'd consider restarting them if there is interest. We do have a monthly call of miniKanren/OCanren researchers from around the world, where someone presents on their research. If you are interested, please send me an email!
lincpa 2y ago
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xyzzy4747 2y ago
Imagine it being 2024 and you don't know how to make your website HTTPS.
- imglorp 2y ago
  Does it matter for an informational site? HTTP is quicker and doesn't expire certs etc. Of course, agree, it's totally needed for anything with a login or downloads etc, but serious question, what's the risk/benefit tradeoff here?
  - xyzzy4747 2y ago
    If you use HTTP you can have middlemen hijacking your content or inserting malicious things and nobody would know. There's all kinds of weird actors out there.
    - will_byrd 2y ago
      Yes, that's enough reason to upgrade. We're working on it! Should have a new version of the site up within a few days. Thanks!
  - Arnavion 2y ago
    The risk is that HTTPS is something you have to manage. Either your hosting provider auto-renews certs for you (which might cost) or you set up your own automation (which can fail, and I've seen enough properties with expired LE-issued certs to know that email reminders can be missed and certbot is not a silver bullet). That said, usually an expired cert fails open, ie users can still visit your website if they accept the scary "this is unsafe" warning. This is not an option if your website uses HSTS or is on a TLD with implicit HSTS (eg .dev), but in that case you're opting in to the responsibility of renewing your certs reliably. The benefit is that you can be sure that nothing modifies the traffic between your server and the client, so the client sees your content without any modification. The counter-points to the benefit are that a) the traffic can still be *blocked* by any party in the middle (eg a state-level firewall), b) that traffic can absolutely be modified if the client has accepted an alternative CA for whatever reason (legal, corporate, etc) and that CA is used to MITM the connection to your server, and c) you as a website operator don't necessarily care about the MITM situation of every client's network (ie them having a MITM is their problem, not yours). There's another benefit that browsers restrict some JS API to only run on https pages, which matters if you wanted to use those API. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Security/Secure_Contexts/features_restricted_to_secure_contexts https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Security/Secure...
racl101 2y ago
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- trelane 2y ago
  I expected some sort of mini academic computer network: https://www.kanren.org/about https://www.kanren.org/about (KAnsas REgents Network)
  - jasonhemann 2y ago
    That's actually related to how the name came about, IIRC!
    - will_byrd 2y ago
      Really? The word 'kanren' means 'relation' in Japanese, and was proposed by Oleg. Is there a naming connection to the Kansas thing?
      - jasonhemann 2y ago
        IIRC, Dan told me that a million years ago, when they were choosing a name for the Kanren sourceforge repo, they had to use a name with a word that was sufficiently prominent on the internet. Kanren worked because there were enough hits for KanREN.
hartator 2y ago
[flagged]
- samatman 2y ago
  You've posted in the wrong thread.
  - hartator 2y ago
    Thanks!
Isamu 2y ago
Shoutout to the illustrator of the Reasoned Schemer, Duane Bibby! Familiar to TeX fans and detractors alike. https://www.tug.org/interviews/bibby.html https://www.tug.org/interviews/bibby.html
- will_byrd 2y ago
  Yes! Great artwork.
notum 2y ago
Mini Karen, on the other hand...
- bobsacamano19 2y ago
  Haha my dyslexic ass read the title as “MiniKaren”… I was half-expecting to see some miniaturized version of someone complaining at a grocery store or something
deleted 2y ago
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ashton314 2y ago
A while back I was trying to understand the guts of miniKanren. I Did a careful reading of the paper and wrote up my notes along with the code here: https://codeberg.org/ashton314/microKanren https://codeberg.org/ashton314/microKanren Hope that helps someone. :) It’s a fantastic little gem of a program. Don’t forget: https://aphyr.com/posts/354-unifying-the-technical-interview https://aphyr.com/posts/354-unifying-the-technical-interview
coldtea 2y ago
It's a small computer language that wants to "talk to the manager"
dang 2y ago
Related. Others? Differences Between miniKanren and Prolog - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39088018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39088018 - Jan 2024 (29 comments) William Byrd on logic and relational programming, miniKanren (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27359963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27359963 - June 2021 (28 comments) Making a “MiniKanren” using Z3Py - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27247386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27247386 - May 2021 (5 comments) MiniKanren as a Tool for Symbolic Computation in Python - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24828498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24828498 - Oct 2020 (1 comment) UKanren in J: Embedding in an Array Language with Rank-Polymorphic Unification [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24298292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24298292 - Aug 2020 (1 comment) Minikanren – An embedded DSL for logic programming - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18698718 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18698718 - Dec 2018 (44 comments) Reazon – miniKanren for Emacs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17947087 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17947087 - Sept 2018 (21 comments) MiniKanren – An embedded DSL for logic programming - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8395079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8395079 - Oct 2014 (22 comments) Relational Programming in miniKanren - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4734592 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4734592 - Nov 2012 (1 comment)
WBrentWilliams 2y ago
Humble brag: This brought back shades of 20 years ago to me. I went back to school to add a credential after my name to make myself employable. My experience running the back office for a long-distance reseller (FoxPro 2.6 database: application support, running customer service, billing, reporting, and being the networking yeoman) didn't look impressive on my resume without some additional alphabet soup. This was my programming languages -- interpreters class. Dr Daniel Friedman ran a teach-along that culminated in implementing miniKanren in scheme. First day of class, the front row was empty. I was ten years older than every other student in the room (with the exception of Will Byrd). I sheepishly shrugged and took one of the offered seats in the row. For the next hour, the sheer force of scheme being written on the whiteboard blew my mind open. That continued for 16 weeks, three days a week. I highly recommend the experience. I (probably) still have a pre-press copy of The Reasoned Schemer in a box in my attic. It was one of the goodies handed out on the last day of class.
- kazinator 2y ago
  I wrote some FoxPro thing for a long-distance reselling operation circa 1994. It had to handle agent commissions on a multi-level scheme and whatnot, import call detail records from telco equipment and such.
- zozbot234 2y ago
  This gives me an idea. I'm going to create a super complex and unintuitive programming language where the only error message you get is "no", and call it miniKaren. :-P
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    > unintuitive programming language where the only error message you get is "no", You know. "Consent" is everything these days.- :) PS. Preferably in written form ...
iFire 2y ago
Question: I want to try miniKanren in my favourite game engine Godot Engine, how would I embed it? The typical options are c++ and porting python to gdscript, but wanted to ask.
- self 2y ago
  A while ago I stumbled across this post: https://tomstu.art/hello-declarative-world https://tomstu.art/hello-declarative-world It walks you through implementing microkanren in Ruby. You might find it easier to implement all of that in gdscript.
  - iFire 2y ago
    Neat. > The six simple building blocks: variables, states, and the four kinds of goal — make two values equal, provide local variables to an existing goal, pursue two existing goals separately, and pursue two existing goals together. > The only data structure is a pair. We can create lists using pairs. I'll play with it more. I have a port of https://github.com/dananau/GTPyhop https://github.com/dananau/GTPyhop and planner systems feel related to relation programming
    - jasonhemann 2y ago
      Interesting fact, there's a neat connection between Micro-Planner and the genesis of Prolog. So I think you could be on to something.
      - iFire 2y ago
        Is there a specific definition of Micro-Planner? Curious.
        jasonhemann 2y ago
        What I was thinking of was this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planner_(programming_language)#Micro-planner_implementation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planner_(programming_language)... . I don't imagine there's any more formal a specification beyond what-they-implemented (but I haven't actually read the paper!)
thro1 2y ago
I don't care about something I don't and didn't care, neither have time for. I've only visited submitted page to check if it's original title is indeed "What Is miniKanren" (doubting it) and _it isn't_ - what for that.. bait ? - nothing I wanted to know about and nothing interesting there - I guess - as I read only the first sentence of this unplanned interruption: "miniKanren is a family of Domain Specific Languages for logic programming", whatever.. - shall the title of this submission better be it ?? - with respect and to not waste people's time and efforts (now just forgetting that few minutes of my life to write about it.. but not others forced labour to explain it - when there is no title: Ask HN, what's that ?). (The Algorithm for Precision Medicine would catch my interest, wouldn't read it today.)
- deleted 2y ago
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- thro1 2y ago
  "What is miniKanren?" it's NOT a title of that page. It's a first line that happen to be there, of quite a lot. The one only short explanation what it is that was there, I've cited in the parent. The title of a submission shall not be edited - right ? - but here, it's obviously hallucinated (there is no title). And I seem to be downvoted by bots with context buffer size of 1 line and a submitter ? who did read no more - but who exploited me and others instead - all paid in reverse. Dang: title of this submission breaks HN guidelines (and I'm dovnvoted for being exploited and saying it, there shall be a warning - but it's up side down, not for me only - coltea .., - or leave: * suck karma exploiting others, my no thanks, sorry).
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What Is miniKanren?

235 points by Bluestein 2y ago

datadrivenangel 2y ago

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mentalgear 2y ago

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laidoffamazon 2y ago

Minikanren was the subject of a phenomenal talk by Matt Might for it's applications in medicine [0] https://www.janestreet.com/tech-talks/algorithm-for-precision-medicine/ https://www.janestreet.com/tech-talks/algorithm-for-precisio...

Bluestein 2y ago
... wherein: "It will demonstrate progress to date, including the now-routine use of relational programming in miniKanren to identify personalized treatments for patients with some of the rarest and most challenging diseases in the world." ... wherefrom I cannot help but be amazed at how personalization through data optimization apparently actually helps solve such things and can be an approach.-
smeej 2y ago
A couple years ago, I tried to wrap my poor little non-developer head around how to use this, because I have a handful of things going on medically that seem (to me) to be connected, but I can't manage to get any doctors to care enough to help me figure out, but I was hopelessly out of my depth. Normally I can at least figure out how to use something, even if I don't understand how it works under the hood, but with this, I couldn't even figure out the next step.
- worldsayshi 2y ago
  You might have better luck if you try today using Claude as support?
  - will_byrd 2y ago
    Alas, you'd still need the knowledge graphs. I hope the licensing issues for at least some of the KGs will be resolved soon. It's a tricky issue. Even some of the ontologies and controlled vocabularies in biomedicine can't be released publicly due to copyright restrictions (for example, full SemMedDB uses UMLS which uses SNOMED).
    - worldsayshi 2y ago
      Makes me wonder if LLMs can be used to generate useful KGs (possibly from the right source material).
- will_byrd 2y ago
  Sorry about that. mediKanren's source code is under MIT license, and is on GitHub. Alas, the knowledge graphs we use for mediKanren aren't produced by us, and often have very complex licenses (one KG might include knowledge from 80 or 100 databases, each with a different license). As a result, we can't just release the KGs that are needed to actually use mediKanren. Also, creating high-quality queries that take into account all the nuances and quirks of the KGs is tricky, and changes as the KGs and the Biolink standard evolve. As a result, mediKanren requires some expertise to use effectively, along with access to the KGs. An application that uses mediKanren as a back-end (along with other reasoners) is the NIH NCATS Biomedical Data Translator: https://ui.transltr.io/ https://ui.transltr.io/ Please keep in mind that both Translator and mediKanren are designed for researchers and for biomedical research, not for patient care or treatment recommendations.
  - smeej 2y ago
    It's surprisingly reassuring to realize it wasn't actually my fault that I couldn't figure it out. Thanks for explaining! I'll look into Translator and see if I can get anywhere that way.
isoprophlex 2y ago
That was an incredible read, a real-life Dr. House episode. And very exciting technology, too. Thanks for sharing.
riffraff 2y ago
fantastic talk, thanks for sharing.
dang 2y ago
Discussed a bit on HN: The Algorithm for Precision Medicine, talk by Matthew Might [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37814662 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37814662 - Oct 2023 (14 comments) The Algorithm for Precision Medicine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29483549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29483549 - Dec 2021 (1 comment)
- fhe 2y ago
  thank you for posting this... and this is a common enough pattern (looking up previous HN threads on the same or related article) that I wonder if it's worthwhile to automate this.

z5h 2y ago

Implementing and using a miniKanren was fun and enlightening. And it helped me appreciate how incredibly optimized and fast SWI-Prolog is for relational/logical programming. If someone knows of a miniKanren/language combination that outperforms SWI-Prolog and has good developer ergonomics for relational/logical programming, I’d love to hear about it.

cess11 2y ago
IIRC SWI-Prolog can be embedded in Python if that's your thing. Interfacing with Scryer Prolog might be require a bit more but ought to be doable, and if they haven't surpassed SWI in some performance metrics yet I'd be surprised. I'm kind of a lisper but I find it easier to get things done in a proper Prolog than the kanrens.
- upghost 2y ago
  It hasn't been merged into the main branch yet, but you can embed Scryer in Python now[1], and it's quite enjoyable. I've also embedded in Java, Clojure, and elisp[2] :) The Clojure one is bundled up into a library called libscryer-clj, which I haven't released yet, but it operates the same way as libpython-clj[3], libjulia-clj[4], and libapl-clj[5]. As an aside, Scryer is hella ergonomic. clpz+reif is an amazing and amazingly powerful combination, and Scryer's DCG philsophy over double quoted strings is chefs kiss -- it really delivers on the original mission of Prolog. Ediprolog[6] is a fantastic REPL for Emacs. And honestly if you haven't seen Marcus Triska's work[7], by God you are missing out on one of the true joys of life. [1]: https://github.com/jjtolton/scryer-prolog/blob/ISSUE-2464/scryer-prolog-shared-lib-eval-code-c/docs/shared_library/scryer_python.py https://github.com/jjtolton/scryer-prolog/blob/ISSUE-2464/sc... [2]: https://github.com/mthom/scryer-prolog/discussions/2687 https://github.com/mthom/scryer-prolog/discussions/2687 [3]: https://github.com/clj-python/libpython-clj https://github.com/clj-python/libpython-clj [4]: https://github.com/cnuernber/libjulia-clj https://github.com/cnuernber/libjulia-clj [5]: https://github.com/jjtolton/libapl-clj https://github.com/jjtolton/libapl-clj [6]: https://www.metalevel.at/ediprolog/ https://www.metalevel.at/ediprolog/ [7]: https://www.youtube.com/@ThePowerOfProlog https://www.youtube.com/@ThePowerOfProlog

will_byrd 2y ago

Hi! I'm one of the miniKanren peeps. Happy to talk miniKanren and relational programming!

eihli 2y ago
Hey! Thanks for all of the work you do. I love reading your stuff. Lately, I've been playing a lot with the code from Neural Guided Constraint Logic Programming for Program Synthesis [1]. I want to apply it to searching for neural network architectures. Something like: (define-relation (layero layer in out) ;; [2] (conde ((== layer `(Linear ,in ,out))) ((== layer `(Relu ,in ,out)) (== in out)) ((fresh (percent) (== layer `(Dropout ,in ,out ,percent)) (== in out) (countero percent) (<o '(1) percent) (<o percent '(0 0 1 0 0 1 1)))))) And a `layerso` that is just a sequence of `layers`. And then use some metric that captures how effective the training run was and use that metric for teaching the search network. I'm sure there's better ways to do it than the way I'm going about it. But it's a fun way to learn a bunch of cool new stuff. Thanks for getting me started down this path! [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.02840 https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.02840 [2] https://github.com/eihli/reason/blob/523920773b7040325c8098a959cfabb12100823b/nas.rkt#L252 https://github.com/eihli/reason/blob/523920773b7040325c8098a...
anotherhue 2y ago
Love your talks! The enthusiasm is infectious.
simonw 2y ago
I have a feature request for the https://minikanren.org/ https://minikanren.org/ website: just one prominent block of example code on that homepage (as early as possible) would be REALLY useful for helping understand at a glance what kind of language this is. I even clicked through quite a few of those prominent early links and didn't find a code example!
- ffsm8 2y ago
  Is that even possible for something like this? You've got a pretty long list of implementations, each having its own language specific syntax, e.g. https://github.com/pythological/kanren https://github.com/pythological/kanren for one python version - and there are several Python versions linked on the homepage.

BoingBoomTschak 2y ago

Personally, I wasn't a fan of The Reasoned Schemer's format, https://io.livecode.ch/learn/webyrd/webmk https://io.livecode.ch/learn/webyrd/webmk worked better as my introduction. See also: µKanren (http://webyrd.net/scheme-2013/papers/HemannMuKanren2013.pdf http://webyrd.net/scheme-2013/papers/HemannMuKanren2013.pdf) and various ports like CL (https://github.com/rgc69/si-kanren https://github.com/rgc69/si-kanren) or Clojure (https://github.com/clojure/core.logic https://github.com/clojure/core.logic)

will_byrd 2y ago
Here's another miniKanren-related livecode you might enjoy (both are thanks to Nada Amin's cool livecode.io tech!): https://io.livecode.ch/learn/gregr/icfp2017-artifact-auas7pp https://io.livecode.ch/learn/gregr/icfp2017-artifact-auas7pp
- BoingBoomTschak 2y ago
  Thanks. Personally, I'd love to see more like https://alex-hhh.github.io/2021/08/fish-puzzle.html https://alex-hhh.github.io/2021/08/fish-puzzle.html When I was in university, the usual Prolog example was solving a game of Cluedo.
  - noisy_boy 2y ago
    Is using miniKanren the only way to solve the fish-puzzle? If no, which language will be most ergonomic and accessible to solve it?
    - shakna 2y ago
      Pascal and Common Lisp were employed in the old benchmark assessment [0]. So just about anything should be able to. But I'd expect many solver languages to be able to make it easier, like Prolog, datalog, mercury. [0] http://cse.unl.edu/~choueiry/Documents/Hybrid-Prosser.pdf http://cse.unl.edu/~choueiry/Documents/Hybrid-Prosser.pdf
    - 2y ago

fud101 2y ago

I wish I was smart enough to understand this. I printed out the paper and tried real hard to understand but felt hopelessly out of my depth.

will_byrd 2y ago
Hi! Which paper were you trying to read? I'd be happy to try to explain anything you found confusing. Perhaps this online tutorial would be a helpful start: https://io.livecode.ch/learn/webyrd/webmk https://io.livecode.ch/learn/webyrd/webmk
- layer8 2y ago
  The main problem is likely that many programmers aren’t familiar with Scheme, or any kind of Lisp. So the material is presented in the context of a host language that itself requires substantial effort to really get used to. Personally, while I did some Lisp back in university and was reasonably conversant in it at the time, nowadays whenever something nontrivial is presented in Lisp, it’s just too much mental overhead to get back into it, in addition to trying to understand the thing that is being presented. Terminology like “logic variable” also needs to be explained, if you want to address an audience that isn’t already familiar with logic programming.
  - jasonhemann 2y ago
    One of the hopes is that you can drop in your favorite host language's syntax and get a working implementation. What's your usual language stack these days?
    - markfsharp 2y ago
      I think the initial surface look makes scheme give a bit of an 'oh crap' response. But since minikanren is actually a small program and scheme doesn't really have syntax the language should be less of a problem than initial concerns might make one think. Grokking the actual logic in any language is going to be the bigger challenge. I guess I am trying to encourage just rolling with lisp if you can, but I totally get the initial reactions toward scheme though.

coliveira 2y ago

The important thing is to realize how much programming has been wasted solving problems that can be easily expressed as logic programming and/or integer programming. If you need to solve logic and combinatorial based problems, learning these techniques will save you hundreds of hours.

thih9 2y ago
Sounds interesting. Could you give a specific example? Say, in a SaaS web app that provides a comments widget (a Disqus clone), what behavior (user facing or behind the scenes) would be a good candidate to implement with logic/integer programming?
- pkal 2y ago
  I have a hunch this might be about the difference between "programming" and "coding". Web stuff, Hardware, and other things that don't get to just communicate with other programmers or programmers have a tendency of piling layers upon layers with custom glue and pipes everywhere.
- riku_iki 2y ago
  There could be library of UI primitives and backend in logical language, then you would write declaration of what you want exactly: - I want window of these size, with such controls - when this button is clicked, text from this control appears in that DB column and system figures out all details making it cross platform, fault tollerant, etc if all infra is coded on that platform
  - jasonhemann 2y ago
    I have a vague recollection about that kind of a declarative UI framework, but I can't remember a single detail. But it's definitely an interesting idea and I know there are other folk out there also interested in your idea.
- ashton314 2y ago
  AWS uses a SAT solver (Z3) to resolve permissions. I can see miniKanren (or some other logic programming language) being helpful in the realm of authorization.

perching_aix 2y ago

i don't know, but their website doesn't support https at least

mcmcmc 2y ago
Why does it need to?
- jessekv 2y ago
  To protect the users of the site from receiving pages that have been tampered with?
  - scotty79 2y ago
    What was the last time that you got served tampered webpage over http?
    - simonw 2y ago
      Happened to my startup back in ~2012. We had built an iPhone app that retrieved HTML pages from a server, but then scanned for extra metadata that was embedded in HTML comments for things like what navigation options should be displayed to accompany that page. We got a bug report from a user that the app broke when they used it on the free WiFi on the London Underground. It turned out there was some weird proxy running on that WiFi network that stripped HTML comments and injected extra tracking code into pages! Switching to https fixed the bug. I haven't shipped anything that uses plaintext HTTP since then.
      - will_byrd 2y ago
        Thank you all for your comments! We are working on a new version of the website, with a new layout, better examples up front, and HTTPS.
    - kazinator 2y ago
      I believe I'm being served tampered content every single time I access HTTP, so the last time that happened coincides with the last time I used a HTTP URL. Here are two hurdles: 1. Can you prove me wrong? 2. Next, given 1, can you rationally justify not rolling out HTTPS everywhere. In other words, is it actually a valid argument that "often, nothing bad happens when you use HTTP, so it is okay". Tampering of content has nothing to do with your privacy; it's a security matter. A nefarious man-in-the-middle could insert content which attacks your browser or redirects it to a malicious site, etc. That attacker could be on a network close to you, or a network close to the site. It's not a matter of trusting or not trusting the original site that serves the HTTP. Therefore it doesn't matter that you're just accessing the site as an anonymous visitor without an authenticated account, just viewing public content.

stalfosknight 2y ago

[flagged]

t00 2y ago
Sadly you're not alone
sesm 2y ago
The name pre-dates the Karen stereotype, but IMO the naming clash is beneficial. I won't be surprised if miniKanren implementation for some new language is actually called Karen.
Bluestein 2y ago
"Kraken" here, at first. But just me I acknowledge ...
agumonkey 2y ago
the 'n' is where the logic comes from
deleted 2y ago
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dankobgd 2y ago

[flagged]

kriz9 2y ago
What would be the benefit of having https for such site?
- debugnik 2y ago
  Even if you don't care about privacy, every single page using bare HTTP can have HTML or JS injected into it by a third-party. Certain ISPs, hotels and airlines do it to their clients, and the script kiddies messing around the poorly firewalled subnet of their college's AP do it too.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
  It would prevent one’s ISP from injecting advertisements in the HTML as has happened commonly in the past with US ISPs. I presume that has mostly fallen out of practice but one could well blame that on the near-ubiquity of HTTPS.
exe34 2y ago
Don't enter your credit card number. Sorted.
deleted 2y ago
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adamgordonbell 2y ago

Request: I'd love to learn more logic programming, SAT solvers, and equation solvers, but in a language I'm familiar with. Maybe python? But where to start? I played with some Scala mini Karen implementations before, but the ones I tried were all half-baked or non-working.

will_byrd 2y ago
You might find Chris Mungall's py-typedlogic interesting: https://py-typedlogic.github.io/ https://py-typedlogic.github.io/
- adamgordonbell 2y ago
  Thanks! And thanks for miniKanren and reasoned schemer!
deleted 2y ago
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debugnik 2y ago
If you're interested in SMT solvers, the Z3 bindings for Python are very easy to use.
deleted 2y ago
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sn9 2y ago
Hillel Wayne is working on a Logic for Programmers book [0] that might be what you're looking for. [0] https://leanpub.com/logic https://leanpub.com/logic
- hwayne 2y ago
  The chapters on both constraint solvers and logic programming are pretty short overviews, we're talking less than 15 pages. I wouldn't recommend it if that's what you're specifically interested in. For SAT/SMT in Python, I've heard this book is pretty good: https://theory.stanford.edu/~nikolaj/programmingz3.html https://theory.stanford.edu/~nikolaj/programmingz3.html. Google OR-tools has a Python frontend and they have interactive tutorials (https://developers.google.com/optimization/examples https://developers.google.com/optimization/examples). I don't know about logic programming in Python. Note that while there's some overlap between logic programming and constraint solving ([1] [2]), the communities are pretty independent from each other. Different histories, tools, techniques, etc. [1]: https://www.swi-prolog.org/pldoc/man?section=clpfd https://www.swi-prolog.org/pldoc/man?section=clpfd [2]: http://picat-lang.org/picatbook2015.html http://picat-lang.org/picatbook2015.html

i_love_retros 2y ago

[flagged]

deleted 2y ago
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jasonhemann 2y ago

For folks that want to engage / learn more, there's been an annual miniKanren workshop and also a monthly miniKanren hangout online. Interested folk should totally come to either both!

lambertsimnel 2y ago
The website describes the online hangouts as weekly and doesn't list any future dates: http://minikanren.org/#hangouts http://minikanren.org/#hangouts Is there more information somewhere?
- will_byrd 2y ago
  I haven't held any hangouts online for years, although I'd consider restarting them if there is interest. We do have a monthly call of miniKanren/OCanren researchers from around the world, where someone presents on their research. If you are interested, please send me an email!

lincpa 2y ago

[dead]

xyzzy4747 2y ago

Imagine it being 2024 and you don't know how to make your website HTTPS.

imglorp 2y ago
Does it matter for an informational site? HTTP is quicker and doesn't expire certs etc. Of course, agree, it's totally needed for anything with a login or downloads etc, but serious question, what's the risk/benefit tradeoff here?
- xyzzy4747 2y ago
  If you use HTTP you can have middlemen hijacking your content or inserting malicious things and nobody would know. There's all kinds of weird actors out there.
  - will_byrd 2y ago
    Yes, that's enough reason to upgrade. We're working on it! Should have a new version of the site up within a few days. Thanks!
- Arnavion 2y ago
  The risk is that HTTPS is something you have to manage. Either your hosting provider auto-renews certs for you (which might cost) or you set up your own automation (which can fail, and I've seen enough properties with expired LE-issued certs to know that email reminders can be missed and certbot is not a silver bullet). That said, usually an expired cert fails open, ie users can still visit your website if they accept the scary "this is unsafe" warning. This is not an option if your website uses HSTS or is on a TLD with implicit HSTS (eg .dev), but in that case you're opting in to the responsibility of renewing your certs reliably. The benefit is that you can be sure that nothing modifies the traffic between your server and the client, so the client sees your content without any modification. The counter-points to the benefit are that a) the traffic can still be *blocked* by any party in the middle (eg a state-level firewall), b) that traffic can absolutely be modified if the client has accepted an alternative CA for whatever reason (legal, corporate, etc) and that CA is used to MITM the connection to your server, and c) you as a website operator don't necessarily care about the MITM situation of every client's network (ie them having a MITM is their problem, not yours). There's another benefit that browsers restrict some JS API to only run on https pages, which matters if you wanted to use those API. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Security/Secure_Contexts/features_restricted_to_secure_contexts https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Security/Secure...

racl101 2y ago

[flagged]

trelane 2y ago
I expected some sort of mini academic computer network: https://www.kanren.org/about https://www.kanren.org/about (KAnsas REgents Network)
- jasonhemann 2y ago
  That's actually related to how the name came about, IIRC!
  - will_byrd 2y ago
    Really? The word 'kanren' means 'relation' in Japanese, and was proposed by Oleg. Is there a naming connection to the Kansas thing?
    - jasonhemann 2y ago
      IIRC, Dan told me that a million years ago, when they were choosing a name for the Kanren sourceforge repo, they had to use a name with a word that was sufficiently prominent on the internet. Kanren worked because there were enough hits for KanREN.

hartator 2y ago

[flagged]

samatman 2y ago
You've posted in the wrong thread.
- hartator 2y ago
  Thanks!

Isamu 2y ago

Shoutout to the illustrator of the Reasoned Schemer, Duane Bibby! Familiar to TeX fans and detractors alike. https://www.tug.org/interviews/bibby.html https://www.tug.org/interviews/bibby.html

will_byrd 2y ago
Yes! Great artwork.

notum 2y ago

Mini Karen, on the other hand...

bobsacamano19 2y ago
Haha my dyslexic ass read the title as “MiniKaren”… I was half-expecting to see some miniaturized version of someone complaining at a grocery store or something

deleted 2y ago

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ashton314 2y ago

A while back I was trying to understand the guts of miniKanren. I Did a careful reading of the paper and wrote up my notes along with the code here: https://codeberg.org/ashton314/microKanren https://codeberg.org/ashton314/microKanren Hope that helps someone. :) It’s a fantastic little gem of a program. Don’t forget: https://aphyr.com/posts/354-unifying-the-technical-interview https://aphyr.com/posts/354-unifying-the-technical-interview

coldtea 2y ago

It's a small computer language that wants to "talk to the manager"

dang 2y ago

Related. Others? Differences Between miniKanren and Prolog - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39088018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39088018 - Jan 2024 (29 comments) William Byrd on logic and relational programming, miniKanren (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27359963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27359963 - June 2021 (28 comments) Making a “MiniKanren” using Z3Py - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27247386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27247386 - May 2021 (5 comments) MiniKanren as a Tool for Symbolic Computation in Python - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24828498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24828498 - Oct 2020 (1 comment) UKanren in J: Embedding in an Array Language with Rank-Polymorphic Unification [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24298292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24298292 - Aug 2020 (1 comment) Minikanren – An embedded DSL for logic programming - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18698718 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18698718 - Dec 2018 (44 comments) Reazon – miniKanren for Emacs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17947087 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17947087 - Sept 2018 (21 comments) MiniKanren – An embedded DSL for logic programming - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8395079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8395079 - Oct 2014 (22 comments) Relational Programming in miniKanren - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4734592 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4734592 - Nov 2012 (1 comment)

WBrentWilliams 2y ago

Humble brag: This brought back shades of 20 years ago to me. I went back to school to add a credential after my name to make myself employable. My experience running the back office for a long-distance reseller (FoxPro 2.6 database: application support, running customer service, billing, reporting, and being the networking yeoman) didn't look impressive on my resume without some additional alphabet soup. This was my programming languages -- interpreters class. Dr Daniel Friedman ran a teach-along that culminated in implementing miniKanren in scheme. First day of class, the front row was empty. I was ten years older than every other student in the room (with the exception of Will Byrd). I sheepishly shrugged and took one of the offered seats in the row. For the next hour, the sheer force of scheme being written on the whiteboard blew my mind open. That continued for 16 weeks, three days a week. I highly recommend the experience. I (probably) still have a pre-press copy of The Reasoned Schemer in a box in my attic. It was one of the goodies handed out on the last day of class.

kazinator 2y ago
I wrote some FoxPro thing for a long-distance reselling operation circa 1994. It had to handle agent commissions on a multi-level scheme and whatnot, import call detail records from telco equipment and such.
zozbot234 2y ago
This gives me an idea. I'm going to create a super complex and unintuitive programming language where the only error message you get is "no", and call it miniKaren. :-P
- Bluestein 2y ago
  > unintuitive programming language where the only error message you get is "no", You know. "Consent" is everything these days.- :) PS. Preferably in written form ...

iFire 2y ago

Question: I want to try miniKanren in my favourite game engine Godot Engine, how would I embed it? The typical options are c++ and porting python to gdscript, but wanted to ask.

self 2y ago
A while ago I stumbled across this post: https://tomstu.art/hello-declarative-world https://tomstu.art/hello-declarative-world It walks you through implementing microkanren in Ruby. You might find it easier to implement all of that in gdscript.
- iFire 2y ago
  Neat. > The six simple building blocks: variables, states, and the four kinds of goal — make two values equal, provide local variables to an existing goal, pursue two existing goals separately, and pursue two existing goals together. > The only data structure is a pair. We can create lists using pairs. I'll play with it more. I have a port of https://github.com/dananau/GTPyhop https://github.com/dananau/GTPyhop and planner systems feel related to relation programming
  - jasonhemann 2y ago
    Interesting fact, there's a neat connection between Micro-Planner and the genesis of Prolog. So I think you could be on to something.
    - iFire 2y ago
      Is there a specific definition of Micro-Planner? Curious.
      - jasonhemann 2y ago
        What I was thinking of was this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planner_(programming_language)#Micro-planner_implementation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planner_(programming_language)... . I don't imagine there's any more formal a specification beyond what-they-implemented (but I haven't actually read the paper!)

thro1 2y ago

I don't care about something I don't and didn't care, neither have time for. I've only visited submitted page to check if it's original title is indeed "What Is miniKanren" (doubting it) and _it isn't_ - what for that.. bait ? - nothing I wanted to know about and nothing interesting there - I guess - as I read only the first sentence of this unplanned interruption: "miniKanren is a family of Domain Specific Languages for logic programming", whatever.. - shall the title of this submission better be it ?? - with respect and to not waste people's time and efforts (now just forgetting that few minutes of my life to write about it.. but not others forced labour to explain it - when there is no title: Ask HN, what's that ?). (The Algorithm for Precision Medicine would catch my interest, wouldn't read it today.)

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thro1 2y ago
"What is miniKanren?" it's NOT a title of that page. It's a first line that happen to be there, of quite a lot. The one only short explanation what it is that was there, I've cited in the parent. The title of a submission shall not be edited - right ? - but here, it's obviously hallucinated (there is no title). And I seem to be downvoted by bots with context buffer size of 1 line and a submitter ? who did read no more - but who exploited me and others instead - all paid in reverse. Dang: title of this submission breaks HN guidelines (and I'm dovnvoted for being exploited and saying it, there shall be a warning - but it's up side down, not for me only - coltea .., - or leave: * suck karma exploiting others, my no thanks, sorry).
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