An online IDE for visual programming in Prolog | Hacker News Reader

An online IDE for visual programming in Prolog

github.com

167 pointstriska18 comments

The blog[1] has getting started info for the current IDE[2]. It uses Tau Prolog[3].

[1] https://toblotron.com/blog/ [2] https://toblotron.com/praxis/0.1.0/ [3] http://tau-prolog.org/

I am curious who is the target audience. I find that visual programming tends to address a very narrow audience of people who are ready to invest a lot of time to learn a tool, but will not learn simple syntax like sql or python.

Pretty sure "Blueprints" by Unreal Engine is a visual programming tool used by a lot of people that know the syntax of various programming languages but still use it because the iteration time is a lot better than the C++ counterpart, as well as less verbose, or/and to avoid all the strict typing needed in that language.

I was curious what the blueprints looked like and did a google image search for screenshots of them. It brought up a unity forum post that does not make them look very palatable.

https://forum.unity.com/threads/unreal-engine-5-game-changer...

Blueprints allow for functions and Macros where you can encapsulate a lot of logic in a single graphical node, as well as grouping/labeling, so no, clean Blueprints don't look like that at all.

Screenshots can't make it justice anyway, because one of the main benefits of using Blueprints is to watch the logic and events flow in real time as you play/debug the game (represented as tiny marching circles)

Here is an interesting talk in this matter of organizing blueprints (52 min): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW0IlgjF-iw

It is the usual monoliths with lack of proper modular programing practices, only applied to visual programming.

Maybe it is time to start doing microservices in visual programming languages. /s

National Instruments LabVIEW is another example of graphical programming.

https://www.ni.com/en-no/shop/labview.html

LabVIEW is not appealing to me. But I know people and companies that swear by it.

We should admit that even though we may not like all examples of graphical programming that we’ve seen, there are a lot of people out there successfully relying on graphical programming to get their work done.

I continue to think that there may be graphical programming tools out there that may appeal to me also. Haven’t tried OP tool yet but maybe I will like it.

There are some tools that work in similar ways that I like, such as for example the nodes editor in Blender.

I worked with LabVIEW extensively between 2014-2016. Its not the best programming experience, but in some domains it was the only option. Our lab had some high end instruments and the only drivers were provided by NI.

Yeah I love function block programming for control systems.

Node-red?

This is really cool! I was just thinking the other day, it would be nice to have Prolog-like interactions for excel/tabular data. Excel is useful, but getting insights into data relationships can be hard or impossible for certain queries.

This is exactly what I was thinking. Can't wait to play around with it.

It would be helpful to have a tutorial how to use the IDE, preferably a video, I just spent 10 minutes with it and can't seem to figure it out. I doubt that it's a lack of intelligence on my side. Even though, one never knows.

I also got some 404 for some css files

I can't either. The blog and screenshot show a dark grid canvas but I can't get that far, just the three panes with the project setup, the query pane, and what might be a module browser.

Right-click on the modelName in the right-hand pane, choose "Add rules page", then click on the "Page nr0" that appears under it

Beyond that, I'm with you that this thing needs a tutorial

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ah-hah: buried in the blog noise is a link to the example data, which boots up into the rules view: https://toblotron.com/praxis/0.1.0/?exampleModel=family.0.1....

yep thank you

Just curious, who uses Prolog nowadays, and what type of application?

People who need to solve problems.

Operations research, optimizations, routing, all the classical AI problems.

There is visual programming and then there is Primitive.io

>At Primitive, we believe that collaboration and immersive visualization are the future of software development. The arrival of virtual reality has provided a groundbreaking new platform to visualize data and collaborate in advanced ways. The Primitive Immersive Development Environment is taking advantage of everything that collaboration in VR can offer while applying new tools for visually analyzing software in 3D.

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