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From: vanroy@pisces.uucp
Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog
Subject: Balance between theory and implementation
Message-ID: <37305@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 27 Jun 90 23:48:37 GMT
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: vanroy@pisces.uucp ()
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
Lines: 15
Keywords:


  Theoreticians need feedback from experiments to see if their ideas are
practical.  Otherwise logic programming will become a branch of mathematical
logic, with no regard to computability or efficiency.
  For example, there has been much good theoretical work on dataflow analysis 
for Prolog, but few implementations.  Hence there is no data (except for a few
small trivial examples) to show whether any of the approaches is effective, or
whether they are a waste of time.  This area is still largely unexplored.
  There is a common notion that implementation is somehow lower than theory,
which is somehow nobler.  This notion is misguided.  Both theory and
implementation are human activities, requiring the full range of human
creativity.  Without implementation to guide it, theory is blind.
 
Sincerely,
  Peter Van Roy