Some Thoughts on How to Teach Prolog

Abstract

Prolog, and (Constraint) Logic Programming in general, represent a unique programming paradigm. Prolog has many characteristics that are not present in other styles of programming, and this is one of the reasons why it is taught. At the same time, and precisely because of this uniqueness, teaching Prolog presents some special challenges. In this paper we present some lessons learned over many years of teaching Prolog, and (C)LP in general, mostly to CS college students, at several universities. We address how to show the beauty and usefulness of the language, and also how to avoid some common pitfalls, misconceptions, and myths about it. The emphasis of our discussion is on how, rather than what. Despite some focus on CS college students, we believe that many of the ideas that we propose also apply to teaching Prolog at any other education level.