A New approach for introducing Prolog to naive users

Abstract

Most Prolog textbooks are based on gradual presentation of Prolog's concepts, as well as some concepts from logic. We think that this order of presentation used in most books is inadequate for readers with little prior experience with logic, mathematics or programming. In this paper we introduce a new approach for teaching Prolog to these “naive” users. Within our framework, the order of concept introduction is based upon the order used in teaching logic: from propositions to predicates. We believe that this approach will ease the difficulties encountered by newcomers to Prolog, and will provide a good basis for better understanding of logic, programming, data-base theory, and perhaps also other relevant disciplines.

The choice of Prolog as a first programming language is also discussed, and we argue that it is a better choice than conventional languages in the same sense that those languages are considered better than machine languages. This claim however should be empirically verified.