Re: Remarks on SWI 7

Feliks:

I largely agree with your input.  In particular, a "small, conceptually 
elegant basic language with a good clean implementation" is a priority.  

> Even the introduction of a really sexy feature like the associative 
> array („dict”) does not seem to me to be worthwhile: we can be efficient 
> enough without it, and Prolog just isn’t the kind of language that can 
> accommodate this in a really natural and elegant way (as noted, I think, 
> by Alan and some others: the amount of traffic about this made my memory 
> overflow).


I don't agree here.  This dict structure can fit naturally, elegantly,
and valuably in Prolog.  On this point, I think we can divide two issues: 
libraries and syntax.

Providing an efficient associative array is both extremely valuable
and can be done without complicating language usage even slightly.
It will simply be a new type and new predicates.

Providing nice syntax necessarily makes the language more complex, but
this complexity can be minimal.  I believe PSI-terms are elegant
and a natural fit, and it's only the details that matter from there.

My debate is with the changes beyond adding dict{} and Dict.value.

Alan

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