Mainstreaming Prolog a Pragmatic Approach?

From: Benjamin Johnston (superhero_at_benjaminjohnston.com.au)
Date: 03/18/04 

Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 22:25:01 +1000

Hello Fellow Prologgers,

I read with interest the recent discussion regarding mainstreaming Prolog.
This has been something on my mind quite a bit lately. I, for one, would
love to see Prolog enter the mainstream. In fact, I'm optimistically hoping
that one day I'll be able to read the job listings in the newspaper and see
at least a handful of positions requiring Prolog or logic programming skills
(okay, okay, at this stage it looks like it probably won't happen, but I'm
hoping...).

So, I'm wondering, are there things that could realistically be done to help
"mainstream Prolog"?

Let us, for the sake of argument, assume that this is something desirable.
And also, that I'm not proposing that Prolog be the next Java, but just that
it becomes considered an essential part of the programmer's toolkit - like
shell/batch scripting, like GUI builders or like a nifty little graphing
library.

Please, I don't want this to deteriorate into a religious war - but what
*constructive* ideas do you have for people like I who want to make Prolog
more credible and popular?

I've some ideas of my own:

- Of course, USING IT, whenever appropriate and whenever I can present a
convincing argument in my job.

- I'd like to set up a website specifically directed to commercial usage of
Prolog, entirely independently of any of the major vendors.

- I'm wondering that maybe an abstraction layer would be helpful - a set of
modules (that differ for each vendor) that sets up a "standard API" that
looks the same - providing a uniform access to the many different module
systems, IO interfaces, GUI interfaces that are available.

- I implemented a "Prolog Server Pages" once that proved to be impressively
powerful (and simple), I'm thinking opening that up when I've got some time
to make it really robust would really be a boost. Maybe also implementing a
Prolog Server Pages interpreter in PHP so that it can be used conveniently
with virtually any web-hosting company.

- I'm wondering that maybe this issue of too many different platforms might
be somewhat alleviated if there was a unified documentation effort (a single
online source that provided explanations, examples, and information about
compatibility for as many known predicates on as many known platforms as
possible).

- Occasionally sponsoring events in the local developer community.

Any thoughts of your own?

My goals are rather long term - I may not get any of these done in the next
12 months; I think a continuous patient effort for many years is what it
might take to bring some of these ideas to reality.

-Benjamin Johnston

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