Prolog - Way Prolog

Author

Way Prolog

anders

2007-05-14, 7:06 pm

No this is not a A is better than B thing.

I have looked att Prolog, and LISP.

I have just leran Basic stuff about both language.

I have a id=E9 to use one of them for making my programms smarter.

Example.

On my former work a machine handling garments,
and it have a lot of rules to figure out the best place
in the machine in a given timeframe.

This was build in C++ with a PostGreSQL databas.

I tried to get my boss to let me test to write the
software with Prolog, but i haven=B4't the skill
to explaine way.

So next time i would like to have som good argument
way Prolog.

In Some areas i have seen LISP and in som i see Prolog
is this a "I like" stuff or does LISP/Prolog matters for
diffrent kind of AI programs ??.

Hope this is not too stupid questions ?

/ Anders

Jan Wielemaker

2007-05-14, 7:06 pm

On 2007-05-14, anders <anders.u.persson@gmail.com> wrote:
> No this is not a A is better than B thing.
>
> I have looked att Prolog, and LISP.
>
> I have just leran Basic stuff about both language.
>
> I have a idé to use one of them for making my programms smarter.
>
> Example.
>
> On my former work a machine handling garments,
> and it have a lot of rules to figure out the best place
> in the machine in a given timeframe.
>
> This was build in C++ with a PostGreSQL databas.
>
> I tried to get my boss to let me test to write the
> software with Prolog, but i haven´'t the skill
> to explaine way.
>
> So next time i would like to have som good argument
> way Prolog.
>
> In Some areas i have seen LISP and in som i see Prolog
> is this a "I like" stuff or does LISP/Prolog matters for
> diffrent kind of AI programs ??.
>
> Hope this is not too stupid questions ?

Its not a stupid question, but you don't get smart programs using an
AI language while it is perfectly possible to write smart programs
using a non-AI language (whatever the name `AI language' may mean).

This smells like a problem for a constraint based system. Many
modern Prolog systems come with constraint solvers, but there are
also constraint solvers for other languages.

To a certain extend Prolog simplifies searching. Partly because its
basic solver does depth-first search. That is nice and good for very
simple things, but in many applications depth-first search is too
simple. More interestingy however is that it can undo its steps and
try an alternative route without you having to worry about it
(backtracking). This again isn't the holy grail as the rather
simple-minded `undo everything since X' of plain Prolog can easily
lead to costly recomputation if you do not carefully design the
order in which things are tried.

Prolog may work good here. If your database isn't very large, you can
easily copy it into Prolog facts and get *much* faster and easier
access.

Success -- Jan

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