Over there on the right from my side, lots of places you can actually reach.

So last week, the big ticket item in the discussion was Prolog.

Now the intention of this is not to give you a Prolog course.

Rather explain the basic concepts behind Prolog and then point you to the manuals.

You should be computer scientists just by sitting here enough to pick up a new programming

language where we've explained to you what the main pitfalls and the main problems are

just by reading the manuals and actually doing a lot of little programs.

Prolog is a wonderful programming language for little programs.

For two things, for two reasons.

One is it can actually do quite a lot in very little space.

Surprisingly much in very little space.

And it can't really do big programs.

Yes, Prolog is touring complete.

It's one of the big surprises, I think.

And the other thing is it's untyped.

It doesn't have an object system.

It doesn't have a module system.

Anything that makes programming languages kind of survive in the large, Prolog doesn't

have.

So when I'm requiring Prolog here, it's more for the experience of something completely

different than actually that I would like to advertise Prolog as a good programming

language for doing heavy duty programming.

I do not believe that it is.

It would have to have much more.

Now Prolog is a programming language that's actually found quite a lot of entry into other

programming paradigms as a kind of a sublanguage.

Certain things you can do Prology very well and especially in modern functional programming

languages.

There's often a kind of a functional logic core somewhere.

And if there is, being able to do Prolog is actually very good for you.

If you have we will come to this.

If you have constraint as a constraint solver in your language, then Prolog is the right

way of getting more mileage out of it.

So for many things Prolog is good, but I do not want to sell it as a real honest to goodness

programming language.

But a good set of ideas.

For many of you, recursion is not something you can do in your sleep.

On the contrary, for many people recursion, the first time you really see it and do it

is bloody hard.

So don't feel ashamed.

You can do it.

But it will take a while until the pain goes away.

And I know, I still remember it being painful.

There's only one way of dealing with this.

Just see it as a test and a practice for your frustration tolerance.

Stay at it.

Do more programming.

Recursive programming.

And at some point, you'll look back and say, I have no idea why I could be so dumb not

to get this.