Criticism
Although Prolog is widely used in research and education, Prolog and other logic programming languages have not had a significant impact on the computer industry in general. Most applications are small by industrial standards, with few exceeding 100,000 lines of code. Programming in the large is considered to be complicated because not all Prolog compilers support modules, and there are compatibility problems between the module systems of the major Prolog compilers. Portability of Prolog code across implementations has also been a problem, but developments since 2007 have meant: "the portability within the family of Edinburgh/Quintus derived Prolog implementations is good enough to allow for maintaining portable real-world applications."
Software developed in Prolog has been criticised for having a high performance penalty compared to conventional programming languages. However, advances in implementation methods have reduced the penalties to as little as 25%-50% for some applications.
Prolog is not purely declarative : because of the cut operator, a procedural reading of a Prolog program is needed to understand it. The order of clauses in a Prolog program is significant. Other logic programming languages, such as Datalog, are truly declarative : clauses can be given in any order.
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