Prolog dialects: a deja vu of BASICs

  • Authors:
  • R A Sosnowski

  • Affiliations:
  • Sanders Associates, Inc., MER24-1283, C.S. 2034, Nashua, N.H.

  • Venue:
  • ACM SIGPLAN Notices
  • Year:
  • 1987

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Abstract

The evolution of Prolog is reminiscent of the kind of dialect formation that BASIC and LISP went through, only worse. Prolog appears to be spawning divergent mutants that differ from one another in syntax, grammar and symmantics. LISP has converged to a set of standards, but BASIC has yet to. LISP as a general purpose language and Prolog as a special purpose language can solve their own class of problems well. Given that both LISP and Prolog are used for artificial intelligence, Prolog has been quite slow to catch on commercially, in large part due to a lack of this standardization, and its future is unclear.