Loglisp: An Alternative to Prolog (1982)

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...

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/

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/...]

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

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.