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From: Julio Di Egidio <julio@diegidio.name>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog
Subject: Re: Guide on how to protect your investments (Was: Is it that worse
 with GNU Prolog?)
Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2024 13:45:50 +0100
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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On 24/11/2024 12:38, Mild Shock wrote:

> I don't feel adressed by you critique. Since I
> think the idea of an Prolog engine is the wrong
> approach. The idea should be a Prolog language,
> like the ISO core standard.

The ISO standard is *broken*, not just totally *inadequate* and totally 
*impractical*.  Which of course is a contribution to, but is rather 
orthogonal and additional to the problem of the sorry state of pretty 
much the whole implementation compartment.  And yet another side of that 
coin is how it is all hijacked essentially by marketers, the very 
rationale that goes with what it is, what it is good for, and how to use 
and/or learn it.  Happy you who are fine to keep playing that game.

> SWI-Prolog did everything
> to be different and better from the ISO core standard.
> And ended up with a bloathed engine that runs
> non-portable code. I did a little bit the same error
> with formerly Jekejeke Prolog, it did not pay attention
> to apply the KISS principle:

SWI-Prolog remains one of the best available of the non-commercial ones: 
it does start failing under heavy duty, plus indeed in some even 
critical areas it has been informed by decisions I couldn't agree less 
with, but it's comparatively a reasonably decent product, and comes with 
tons of libraries, a module system and an online package system, support 
for code documentation and testing, native extensibility, constraint 
programming, and what-not: the whole shenanigan pretty much, and if it 
had a JS runtime proper it would super.  We are lucky that it exists,
publicly available, and kept alive.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle

The level of incompetence in our field is shocking:
<https://architectando.blogspot.com/2012/01/to-keep-it-simple-you-need-to-be-smart.html>

> If you develop against
> an idea of a Prolog language and not against an idea of
> a Prolog engine, chances are higher that stay agile and
> can easily switch Prolog engines, and protect your investment.

That was not even true once upon a time, that one can just develop for a 
"language".  Then again, happy who is simply oblivious: maybe.

(EOD: I am done bashing and go back to building.)

-Julio