Download A Beginners Guide to Visual Prolog

Preface
There is a beautiful programming language out there. It is called Prolog.
Originally the language Prolog was created by Calmeraur it was popularized by famous books by
Clocksin & Mellish and by Ivan Bratko and brought to the masses by software producer Borland who
sold Turbo Prolog for MsDos systems. But the masses didn’t buy it and Borland stopped selling
Turbo Prolog.
That was long ago. After a few years it became apparent that the makers of Turbo Prolog had returned
to Denmark and started the company PDC: the Prolog Development Company. They put years of
effort into their dialect of the language and now there is Visual Prolog. It is object-oriented, it has a
Graphical User Interface, it has a Integrated Development Environment.
And it still has the charm and elegance of the language they call Prolog.
Formerly the great problem in learning Prolog was that you had to master the very different thinking
of a declarative programming language. Once you’ve mastered it, it is a great way to write computer
programs, so the effort was and is worthwhile.
But nowadays it is not only mastering a declarative language, there are these other aspects of a
modern programming language: object-orientation, graphical user interface, et cetera. This book is an
effort to tell you all about it.
This book is an introduction. It is meant for people who know little about programming. It is not for
people that know nothing. You should know the basics about computers and that it is possible to
program them and that for a program you use a programming language. But nowadays these things
seem to bee widely known - even among computer nitwits. What when you know more? Then you
should look for other sources.
•
When you are programmer and know about other languages like Visual Basic or C##, read the
book Prolog for Tyros by Eduardo Costa.
•
When you know about other languages and are curious about Prolog, read the articles by
Thomas Linder Puls and Sabu Francis at the Visual Prolog web site at www.pdc.dk.
•
When you have experience in Prolog programming, look for details about Visual Prolog, object
orientation in the advanced tutorials at the same web site.
You will find the publications at the website: www.pdc.dk -> Solutions -> Visual Prolog -> Tutorials.
At that site you will also find a Wiki on programming in Visual Prolog
There is a lot available about Visual Prolog. But for a beginner it is very hard to find his way through
all the material. This book tries to bring structure in the apparent chaos for the beginner. I edited this
book by borrowing and rewriting texts from other people (with their consent) and by filling in some
gaps with old material that I wrote years ago. It all comes together in this introductory text. I have
tried to keep the content as low profile as possible, so even beginners can use it.
But if you think that some things are not understandable, please let me know. You can reach me at
[email protected].
Groningen, Autumn 2008.
Thomas W. De Boer