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From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog
Subject: Environments (was Re: Arity's so-called upgrade)
Message-ID: <5024@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au>
Date: 21 Mar 91 13:29:59 GMT
References: <11768@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> <12066@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>
Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia
Lines: 65

In article <12066@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>, todd@uhunix1.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Todd Ogasawara) writes:
> programmers all use clumsy primitive tools to do development? The
> integration of a good development environment with a functioning and
> optimized interpreter or compiler is the key to professional software
> development.

> Yes, but Turbo Prolog survives as PDC Prolog. I'm not saying that PDC
> Prolog is better than Arity. If I did, I would have switched to it long ago
> since it does provide a lot of the environmental features I want to see it
> Arity.

> While I would agree that the "Prolog aspects" of Arity Prolog meet all the
> requirements needed to write "Prolog" programs, the package itself falls
> far short of what "professional" programmers expect to be provided in a
> professional development system.

I think there is something of great value to all of us to be extracted
from this discussion, and I think it warrants a new thread.  I have
_not_ used Arity/Prolog, and I _have_ used Turbo Prolog.  I found the
Turbo environment to be a pain where I sit down, and that's throwing
roses at it.  Turbo wanted me to do everything _it's_ way in stupid
little tiny windows.  I would *eagerly* have sacrified colour and all
their nasty menus for a really simple interface which just sat there
and did what I told it.  It is difficult for me to imagine anything
more painful to use, and no, I would not regard an upper case model
33 teletype as more painful than Turbo's environment.

So there's a very important question.  What DO people want in a Prolog
development environment?  I would like things like
	- find-definition
	- incremental cross-referencer (like UTIL:IXREF only graph
	  based)
	- graphical profiler (gauge)
	- partial execution tool, with a large kit of templates
	  to work from
	- data flow checkers (mode analysis &c)
	- OPTIONAL type checkers (like NU Prolog's four)
	- declarative debugging tools
	- some kind of "smart" documentation facility
	  (something like the Eiffel tools, perhaps)
	- a system which associates test data with program
	  components, without using source trick like 'end_of_file'
Some of these things are in LPA MacProlog (in fact, if only LPA
MacProlog was closer to Edinburgh Prolog I would like that environment
a lot), some of them are in SICStus Prolog, some of them are in NU Prolog,
some of them exist as separate tools.

Of major importance to me is
	- a LARGE library of working reusable components
	  (what would Eiffel be without its library?)
I think the Quintus Prolog library is about 1/10th of the "right"
size for a Prolog library.  (I have given up waiting for an answer
to the question of what cones are FOR, by the way...)

As I recall the Turbo Prolog 2.0 environment, it addressed *none* of
these issues.  (It had a type checker, but it wasn't optional, and
the type system was *pathetic*.)

So what ARE the things that professional programmers expect in a
professional development system that Arity fails to provide, and
who does provide them?  What, for goodness' sake, is it that
Turbo does right?

-- 
Seen from an MVS perspective, UNIX and MS-DOS are hard to tell apart.