Re: Offensive language in Prolog code

2013/7/28 Dincer Uyav <[email protected]>

> Dear Wouter,
>
> Thank you very much for your enlightening remarks; be sure I will study
> them (as I do not grasp their full deep meaning yet).
>
> However I find even pure Prolog already esoteric enough (my co-developers
> would never touch it). The reason why I am trying to teach my nephews is
> simple: it is better suited to their attention span. Go teach js prototypes
> to the newer generation; Prolog is just intuitive. You never think twice
> about what has to be unified with what nor about recursion, which are
> humanly intuitive.
>
> If you are a C# (procedural, oo) or an F# (functional) person, you won't
> touch prolog; it requires a different kind of mind-set. Same way, if you
> are a prolog person, you won't touch F# (in prolog, everything is global in
> the fact-base). But using prolog is more productive than C# for some tasks.
> Hence the need to switch between different approaches (procedural, oo,
> functional, logic), which is not evident.
>
>
Dincer, consider that there are very little chances that a Prolog
programmer don't know about other paradigms.

For myself, after a life doing C, C++, SQL, .NET, C#, Excel and the like,
for a living, and (largely) unsuccessful attempts to bring Prolog to
attention of my coworkers,
I've maturated the conviction that it's all a matter of taste. Prolog has a
particular aesthetic, that sets it apart in the crowded programming
landscape.

The principal merit of SWI-Prolog, IMHO, is to make possible to tackle real
world problems *efficiently* inside Prolog itself.
In the long run, I hope will change the state of mind that most people
seems to holds about Prolog...


> I think the prolog community should be more inventive in teaching it to
> people like me, regarding e.g. difference lists; there are thousands of
> examples about them on the web, all of them about "append". I do not feel
> comfortable implementing DCGs from scratch, albeit it is just about an
> operator and difference lists..
>
>
A fascinating practical use of DGC, instructive of the difficulties found
when approaching real world problems, is the
html_write<http://www.swi-prolog.org/pldoc/man?section=htmlwrite>library.

bye Carlo

By the way, I do not know what "Pack" means (in your post-scriptums(a?)); I
> especially did not understand PS2. But I understand your first
> post-scriptum a little bit more: I do not get evil so I serve its purpose.
>
> Cheers,
> Dincer
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>  From: Wouter Beek <[email protected]>
> To: Dincer Uyav <[email protected]>
> Cc: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
> Sent: Sunday, July 28, 2013 10:54 AM
> Subject: Re: [SWIPL] Offensive language in Prolog code
>
>
>
> Hi Dincer,
>
> As I understand it, the EVIL package is a form of "esoteric programming".
> As with other examples of esoteric programming, parts of the EVIL codebase
> should be interpreted as satire on the normal use of Prolog or programming
> in general.  This means that the use of strong language should be assessed
> relative to this context. The comment that you quote is clearly a pun on
> the standard way of stating the license of a piece of code. It seems that
> you have missed this literary or 'aesthetic' context a bit. The use of
> strong language has historically been part of the genre (as it has been
> part of other genres of comedy as well), for instance
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck.
>
>
> I think that EVIL is a cunning piece of code that is probably best
> appreciated by people who are well-versed in Prolog. Its purpose will
> probably not be understood by your nephews, as they are starting to learn
> Prolog. One has to know the standard/default way of doing things in order
> to understand the twists and puns that EVIL consists of. By the time your
> nephews become better at writing Prolog code, they will probably start to
> like EVIL for the above stated reasons. Keep us posted by the time they do!
>
>
> PS1: Two anonymous posters on the Pack's site haven't understood this
> context either, judging by their lack of understanding that speaks from the
> comments they left (e.g.,
> "Serious waste of time"). It's too bad that people leave comments without
> understanding the thing they are commenting on properly, although in this
> case the critique that EVIL is a waste of time is -- in a satirical sense
> -- exactly one of its purposes.
>
>
> PS2: The Pack's site says: "Failed to process pack" This probably points
> at an issue on the server-side?
>
>
>
> ---
> Cheers!,
> Wouter.
>
> E-mail: [email protected]
> WWW: www.wouterbeek.com
> Tel.: 0647674624
>
>
> On Sun, Jul 28, 2013 at 7:03 AM, Dincer Uyav <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> A certain michael richter published his (properly named) EVIL.PL with the
> following license:
> >
> >:- multifile license:license/3. license:license(wtfpl, lgpl,  [
> comment('Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License'),  url('
> http://www.wtfpl.net/txt/copying')]). :- license(wtfpl).
> >
> >Do we need such offensive language in Prolog code?
> >
> >I am currently trying to teach Prolog to my nephews and prefer not to
> show them this piece of P-code.
> >
> >I don't know what this guy was smoking at the time but I am deeply
> offended and expect SWI-Prolog not to host such illicit material; I am sure
> your membership agreement considers this as grounds for immediate
> termination.
> >
> >Dincer
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