Abstract
Most Prolog textbooks are based on gradual presentation of Prolog's concepts, as well as some concepts from logic. We think that this order of presentation used in most books is inadequate for readers with little prior experience with logic, mathematics or programming. In this paper we introduce a new approach for teaching Prolog to these “naive” users. Within our framework, the order of concept introduction is based upon the order used in teaching logic: from propositions to predicates. We believe that this approach will ease the difficulties encountered by newcomers to Prolog, and will provide a good basis for better understanding of logic, programming, data-base theory, and perhaps also other relevant disciplines.
The choice of Prolog as a first programming language is also discussed, and we argue that it is a better choice than conventional languages in the same sense that those languages are considered better than machine languages. This claim however should be empirically verified.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
J. Briggs, Micro-Prolog Rules!, Logic Programming Associates, London, 1984.
K. Clark and F. McCabe, Micro-Prolog — Programming in Logic, Prentice-Hall, Englewood, 1984.
W. Clocksin and C. Mellish, Programming in Prolog, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1981.
R. Ennals, Beginning Micro-Prolog, Ellis Horwood, Chichester, 1984.
O. Maler, Z. Scherz and E. Shapiro, A New Approach for Introducing Prolog to Naive Users, Technical Report CS86-3, The Weizmann Institute, 1986.
S. Safra, Wisdom Prolog Interpreter, Unpublished, 1984.
L. Sterling and E. Shapiro, The Art of Prolog, MIT Press, (to be published).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1986 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Maler, O., Scherz, Z., Shapiro, E. (1986). A New approach for introducing Prolog to naive users. In: Shapiro, E. (eds) Third International Conference on Logic Programming. ICLP 1986. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 225. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-16492-8_102
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-16492-8_102
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-16492-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-39831-8
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive