Day: February 27, 2021

Everything you wanted to know about Prolog, but were afraid to ask

If you were ever curious about learning Prolog, here’s 11 links to get you started. I did a lot of Prolog programming in the 1990s. It was one of the highlights of my career.  I played around with Lisp and other A.I. technology, but Prolog was the one I kept coming back to. I don’t write as much code these days, and when I do, I tend to write it in Python. But Prolog still has a place in my heart. It’s a great language that can do things no other language can. To see what I mean, check these out:

  1. Here’s a good intro to get you a handle on the language:Introduction to logic programming with Prolog
  2. Want to dive in and learn Prolog? This is good: Learn prolog in Y Minutes
  3. When learning code it is good to look at other people’s code. Here’s a repo on Github of sample code to look at: mjones-credera/prolog-samples: Sample Prolog code
  4. This repo has even more code: Anniepoo/prolog-examples: Some simple examples for new Prolog programmers
  5. You can take advantage of all that data in a relational database by connecting it up to Prolog like this: SWI-Prolog connecting to PostgreSQL via ODBC – Wiki – SWI-Prolog
  6. You can even run it on a Raspberry Pi: Prolog on the Pi | scidata
  7. IBM used Prolog with the initial version of Watson. You can read about it here: Natural Language Processing With Prolog in the IBM Watson System – Association for Logic Programming
  8. One of the things Prolog was really good at. In some ways I think better than some standalone ML tools: Expert Systems in Prolog
  9. Lots of good links, here: The Power of Prolog | Hacker News
  10. I haven’t played around with this but it is worth considering:  Small Prolog – Managing organized complexity
  11. Finally, here’s 99 small problems that Prolog can solve.

Here’s a whole new list of Prolog links I found in the 2024 to add to this list:

  1. I found this helpful: how to get started using  prolog in visual studio code
  2. This person’s page has a lot of material on  Prolog and more
  3. How to process  rdf with prolog
  4. This is great: a fast way to learn  prolog in X minutes.
  5. An old piece on the power of prolog.
  6. How prolog helps do artificial intelligence.
  7. Relatedly, natural language processing with prolog.
  8. A simple tutorial on Tau Prolog
  9. Another intro to Prolog.
  10. How to  learn prolog language by creating an expert system.
  11. Here’s an expert sysem  repo. This one is a course advisor. This one does lung diagnosis. Here’s a  Music Suggestion Expert System.
  12. A good  Prolog CheatSheet.
  13. Something else to help with  Learning Prolog.
  14. More good tutorials on  the power of prolog. Also this.

 

On Basquiat’s notebooks

At the Brooklyn Museum they had an exhibit of Basquiat’s notebooks. They wrote:

A self-taught artist with encyclopedic and cross-cultural interests, Basquiat was influenced by comics, advertising, children’s sketches, Pop art, hip-hop, politics, and everyday life. Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks emphasizes the distinct interplay of text and images in Basquiat’s art, providing unprecedented insight into the importance of writing in the artist’s process. The notebook pages on display contain early renderings of iconic imagery—tepees, crowns, skeleton-like figures, and grimacing faces—that also appear throughout his large-scale works, as well as an early drawing related to his series of works titled Famous Negro Athletes.

If you are a fan of the artist, I recommend you check this out: Brooklyn Museum: Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks.

If you have someone who is interested in making their own art, encourage them to check it out too. Seeing Basquiat’s notebooks can remind them that even with humble materials, the potential to create something great exists.