--- Mark Kvale <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:[snip]
1) Prolog was hot in the 80's but is hardly ever used these days. If it hasn't stood the test of time, why should I care?
Prolog has traditionally been viewed as rather slow and, due to the nature of its design, debugging is sometimes a painful experience. Further, because so many programmes are weaned on imperative or OO languages, Prolog just seems "foreign". Building large applications can be cumbersome, as a result of these factors.
[snip]
I think another reason Prolog didn't catch on is that it got a bad rap as an "AI" language (along with Lisp and, to a lesser extent, Smalltalk) and suffered in the post-hype AI winter of the late eighties / early nineties.
It's also a far bigger leap in style. If you're used to procedural programming you can carry on writing procedural code in most OO languages (indeed a depressing number of people do just that in my experience :-) With Prolog, and similar languages, you've got to jump in with both feet.
Cheers,
Adrian
