Prolog Programming in Depth

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1. lkutyNov 2025
   I only read the first 88 pages of Prolog Programming in Depth but I found it to be the best introductory book for programming in Prolog because it presents down to earth examples of coding like e.g. reading a file, storing data. Most other books are mainly or only focused on the pure logic stuff of Prolog but when you program you need more.

   Another way of getting stuff done would be to use another programming language with its standard library (with regex, networking, json, ...) and embed or call Prolog code for the pure logic stuff.

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2. daviddaviddavidJul 2020
   I have many Prolog books and by far the most practical or "real world" of them is "Prolog Programming in Depth" by Covington/Nute/Vellino, which the lead author has made freely available as a PDF:

   http://www.covingtoninnovations.com/books/PPID.pdf

   It doesn't shy away from explicitly discussing how one goes about expressing various procedural/imperative constructs in a declarative manner.

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3. segmondyOct 2018
   The exposure most people have to prolog in school is about a chapter in the "programming languages" course.

   Yes, pick any book and work through it from page 1 to the end. Preferable 3! Read and pour through the manuals for whatever interpreter & compiler you use. Be warned, Prolog will ruin you, you shall be able to slay dragons and at the same time you most likely will not enjoy programming in "modern languages" anymore.

   (Intro/Novice)

     Learn Prolog Now (free on the web)
     Adventure in Prolog(free on the web)
     Logic Programming with Prolog
   

   (Intermediate)

     The Practice of Prolog
     Prolog Programming for Artificial Intelligence
     Prolog Programming In Depth
     Prolog Experiments in Discrete Mathematics, Logic, and Computability
   

   (Advanced)

     The Art of Prolog
     The Craft of Prolog
     Clause and Effect
     Simply Logical
   
     Prolog and Natural Language Analysis
     Meta Programming Logic
     Intelligent Image Processing in Prolog
     Expert Systems in Prolog
     Functional Grammar in Prolog
   

   (Papers)

     Warren Abstract Machine
     Negation and Control in Prolog

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4. fusiongyroJul 2017
   A Mentoring Course in Smalltalk[0]. I was really surprised, after reading and really loving Design Patterns, that there was still so much to say about OO design.

   I did love Design Patterns a lot though. Purely Functional Data Structures by Chris Okasaki was also really useful for Haskell, as was Real World Haskell.

   Programming Prolog probably had a bigger influence on my Prolog than the other books, even though I read Art of Prolog and Prolog Programming in Depth first. Especially the latest edition, it's a really beautiful book.

   [0]: http://www.lulu.com/us/en/shop/andres-valloud/a-mentoring-co...

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5. jherdmanOct 2009
   Prolog is a pretty neat language. It feels really strange at first, but as you grow used to its weirdness, it becomes much more enjoyable.

   I learned Prolog in university using the book "Prolog Programming in Depth", by Michael A. Covington, Donald Nute, and André Vellino. Frankly, I didn't use the book all that much. It was a handy reference now and then, but it wasn't essential. Perhaps there's some good tutorials online?

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