
Loglisp: An Alternative to Prolog (1982) - grzm
https://aitopics.org/download/classics:4A93472A
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nmadden
The first author of this is John Alan Robinson, inventor of the first
unification algorithm and thus the first practical resolution theorem proving
algorithm, on which Prolog was developed.

I remember reading a history of Prolog, I think by Kowalski, which mentioned
that Robinson always preferred Lisp to Prolog, despite it being built on his
ideas. I’ll try and dig out a reference.

Edit: I found the article I was thinking of [1], on Maarten van Emden’s blog.
Here is the quote:

> A few years later some excited evangelists brought Robinson the news that
> resolution had led to a new programming language. Robinson was delighted to
> see some sample programs and an explanation of how resolution was used to
> execute them. The evangelists took it for granted that henceforth Robinson
> would program in Prolog. They were disappointed to learn that no, for
> Robinson Lisp was the one and only programming language and that it could
> not even be displaced by an elegant embodiment of his own brain child.

[1]: [https://vanemden.wordpress.com/2017/09/08/conceptual-
integri...](https://vanemden.wordpress.com/2017/09/08/conceptual-integrity-
why-it-matters-and-how-to-get-it/)

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agumonkey
Do you know texts about the stratchey / landin school of thought ? I'd love to
read about purely denotational interpreters. I found a few things about both
but it never explained their ideas in these terms.

ps: oh well, these slides about the british computing history links a few
texts [http://sml-family.org/history/ML2015-talk.pdf](http://sml-
family.org/history/ML2015-talk.pdf)

~~~
nmadden
I don’t know much to point you at sorry, apart from general works on
denotational semantics.

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agumonkey
thanks nonetheless

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joshuaeckroth
I'm glad to see a classic article linked from AITopics. We have a big
collection there, as well as articles from NeurIPS, AAAI conferences, AI
Journal, and news sources, amounting to 200k+ items, all fully classified into
AI topics. Have a look!

[https://aitopics.org/](https://aitopics.org/)

~~~
joshuaeckroth
Here is more information about the Loglisp paper:
[https://aitopics.org/doc/classics:4A93472A](https://aitopics.org/doc/classics:4A93472A)

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Y_Y
I think minikanren in racket or core.logic in clojure nicely fill this gap
now.

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lispm
Like hundreds of other embeddings of logic languages.

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smadge
The classic textbook Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs has a
chapter on implementing a logic programming language embedded in Scheme.
[source: [https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/full-
text/...](https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/full-
text/book/book-Z-H-29.html#%_sec_4.4)]

~~~
white-flame
While SICP is certainly a great book, more direct to the topic would be a
different classic:

Norvig's _Paradigms of AI Programming_ is purely about creating logic &
unification systems in Lisp, and the foundation of many codebases still in use
today.

[https://github.com/norvig/paip-lisp](https://github.com/norvig/paip-lisp)

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rurban
I prefer picat or mercury as better and more modern prolog's.

There are not do many logical extensions still, just typesystems and contracts
getting better recently (Ada spark, ATS), bug a real prolog with a real SAT
solver are way better.

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MaxBarraclough
How's Mercury doing these days?

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rurban
Not so good, I think. Picat is fine (but no types, no native compilation),
spark and ATS got better recently.

