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From: randyg@iscuva.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog
Subject: Re: PROLOG Digest   V5 #15
Message-ID: <489@iscuva.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 15-Mar-87 17:24:05 EST
Article-I.D.: iscuva.489
Posted: Sun Mar 15 17:24:05 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 18-Mar-87 01:21:41 EST
References: <8703131556.AA25341@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Reply-To: randyg@iscuva.UUCP (Randy Gordon)
Followup-To: Prolog Digest
Distribution: world
Organization: ISC Systems Corporation, Spokane, WA
Lines: 52
Keywords: Arity, Prolog, Turbo
Summary: Further Arity



*GLACK*


My name is Randy GORDON, NOT RANDY REED! (header of last prolog digest entry)

Over the past couple of years, ISC's Eye to AI group has developed the
same program(Business Case Analyzer) in C, Lisp, Scheme, Ops5(Actually
FLOPS, a much superior PC clone), and both Turbo Prolog and Arity
Prolog.  (We were investigating what language to use and things got a
little carried away). Version 10.4 occupies roughly 2.75 Megabytes of disk
and 400K of source code(the rest is database information). Its written in
Arity prolog. Turbo had nicer features(the includable editor is sorely missed)
but it just couldn't handle the load. Thats the major problem with Turbo ...
Limitations. Limitations in number of predicates, in amount of data, in lots
of areas. Sure you can kludge around the missing parts of Edinburgh prolog,
and in lots of applications you don't even need to kludge. Arity is about
half as fast, but you don't need to kludge. You dont have to play with
overlays in Arity, you can include the interpreter into your compiled code
royalty free, and have up to a GIGABYTE of source code and let the automatic
virtual memory worry about overlaying. Most of the SCORE libraries work
without change(and are available on the Arity bulletin Board)and there is
user written code for such things as a forward chaining OPS5, and a windowing
system, as well as a San Marco Explorer type tutorial(Active Prolog Tutor).
Best of all, you can move up to a mainframe prolog with little effort.

The tech support is much better than Borlands(At least at the time I dealt
with Turbo, but they might have improved since then). There is even an
EMYCIN like expert system and a full DB2 compatable SQL database available.

I would have to disagree about how easy it is to learn Turbo prolog. Turbo
was the prolog I first learned prolog programming with, and most of my books
quickly died on the lack of dynamic programming predicates. A beginner just
has too little experience to kludge up substitutes, and as far as I know

(and I have examined most every prolog book out) there is no advanced prolog
book (ala Marcus, Shapiro, Kluzniak, etc.) suitable for learning with Turbo.

In short, Turbo is good only if you have a relatively small program or a 
really experienced and talented prolog programmer. If you just want the
specialized toolkit that comes with it, you would be better off in
Turbo Pascal.





Randy Gordon     "Tao ku tse fun pee"

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Arity and these opinions are my
	    personal ones and not necessarily those of my company.