Comparison With Logic Programming
In logic programming, a program is a set of premises, and computation is performed by attempting to prove candidate theorems. From this point of view, logic programs are declarative, focusing on what the problem is, rather than on how to solve it.
However, the backward reasoning technique, implemented by SLD resolution, used to solve problems in logic programming languages such as Prolog, treats programs as goal-reduction procedures. Thus clauses of the form:
- H :- B1, …, Bn.
have a dual interpretation, both as procedures
- to show/solve H, show/solve B1 and … and Bn
and as logical implications:
- B1 and … and Bn implies H.
Experienced logic programmers use the procedural interpretation to write programs that are effective and efficient, and they use the declarative interpretation to help ensure that programs are correct.
Read more about this topic: Procedural Programming
Famous quotes containing the words comparison with, comparison, logic and/or programming:
“Intolerance respecting other people’s religion is toleration itself in comparison with intolerance respecting other people’s art.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“The comparison between Coleridge and Johnson is obvious in so far as each held sway chiefly by the power of his tongue. The difference between their methods is so marked that it is tempting, but also unnecessary, to judge one to be inferior to the other. Johnson was robust, combative, and concrete; Coleridge was the opposite. The contrast was perhaps in his mind when he said of Johnson: “his bow-wow manner must have had a good deal to do with the effect produced.””
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“Logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world. Logic is transcendental.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver’s seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)