The Mercury logic programming system (opens in new tab)

(github.com)

77 pointsAntibabelic7d ago17 comments

17 comments

Oh wow, Zoltan was one of my lecturers at UniMelb, and in one semester we were tasked with learning his Mercury language. So good to see it thriving still.

zeafoamrun5d ago

I TA-ed for Zoltan's 2nd year "learning how to use bash/gdb/etc" class and it was a lot of fun. I hope they're still teaching that class.

angry_octet5d ago

It was called "433-252 Software Engineering Principles & Tools" until ~2008 I think (433-244 before that) but then it seems to have been reorganised. Tbh, Unimelb Comp Sci is a shadow of it's former self, a victim of the 'Melbourne Model' common core sausage factory concept.

ofrzeta5d ago

Is it the same model as the "Bologna process" in Europe, which is kind of funny because "Bologna" also refers to a type of sausage in the US of A.

angry_octet5d ago

I hope he's stopped drinking Fanta.

5-5d ago

prince, a high quality html renderer used for typesetting, is written in mercury:

https://www.princexml.com/doc/acknowledgements/

ororroro5d ago

There are files in this repository that were last touched 32 years ago. Any reason to be posting it now?

kaonwarb5d ago

Not that it necessarily applies here, but as a heuristic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect

ororroro5d ago

Interesting point. My understanding of Mercury is that it is hard carried by Zoltan so it has a bus factor of 1.

zeafoamrun5d ago

I always understood it was a teaching language for students who wanted to get programming language implementation experience.

epgui5d ago

Why is that relevant or noteworthy? There are files that were updated recently too.

ororroro5d ago

Why the aggression? This language while cool has existed for decades and never taken off. I just wanted a reason to believe it relevant so I could have an excuse to take another look.

hackyhacky5d ago

Why do you think "oldest untouched file" is a good metric for relevance? Do you know what is the oldest untouched file in gcc or Python?

srean5d ago

"Taking off" is an unreliable metric of capability and fitness to a problem you may want solved.

epgui5d ago

There was no aggression.

zeafoamrun5d ago

Damn dude you're making me feel old

thechao5d ago

The closest that I could find to a "what the fuck is this?" page is:

https://www.mercurylang.org/about.html

KnuthIsGod5d ago

Last release was in 2023.

It is effectively dead.

This is a terrible shame, because this would have been an nice modern alternative to Prolog.

kryptiskt5d ago

Last commit was 2 minutes ago. Seems like a better measure than releases, different projects have different release cadences.

wduquette5d ago

You say “dead”, I say “stable”. Not everyone wants to base their work on a moving target.

jamwise5d ago

But the repo has had fairly consistent commits since then. Not huge activity, but not sure I'd call it dead.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

17 comments

ElectroSlayer5d ago

Oh wow, Zoltan was one of my lecturers at UniMelb, and in one semester we were tasked with learning his Mercury language. So good to see it thriving still.

zeafoamrun5d ago

I TA-ed for Zoltan's 2nd year "learning how to use bash/gdb/etc" class and it was a lot of fun. I hope they're still teaching that class.

angry_octet5d ago

ofrzeta5d ago

Is it the same model as the "Bologna process" in Europe, which is kind of funny because "Bologna" also refers to a type of sausage in the US of A.

angry_octet5d ago

I hope he's stopped drinking Fanta.

5-5d ago

prince, a high quality html renderer used for typesetting, is written in mercury:

https://www.princexml.com/doc/acknowledgements/

ororroro5d ago

There are files in this repository that were last touched 32 years ago. Any reason to be posting it now?

kaonwarb5d ago

Not that it necessarily applies here, but as a heuristic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect

ororroro5d ago

Interesting point. My understanding of Mercury is that it is hard carried by Zoltan so it has a bus factor of 1.

zeafoamrun5d ago

I always understood it was a teaching language for students who wanted to get programming language implementation experience.

epgui5d ago

Why is that relevant or noteworthy? There are files that were updated recently too.

ororroro5d ago

Why the aggression? This language while cool has existed for decades and never taken off. I just wanted a reason to believe it relevant so I could have an excuse to take another look.

hackyhacky5d ago

Why do you think "oldest untouched file" is a good metric for relevance? Do you know what is the oldest untouched file in gcc or Python?

srean5d ago

"Taking off" is an unreliable metric of capability and fitness to a problem you may want solved.

epgui5d ago

There was no aggression.

zeafoamrun5d ago

Damn dude you're making me feel old

thechao5d ago

The closest that I could find to a "what the fuck is this?" page is:

https://www.mercurylang.org/about.html

KnuthIsGod5d ago

Last release was in 2023.

It is effectively dead.

This is a terrible shame, because this would have been an nice modern alternative to Prolog.

kryptiskt5d ago

Last commit was 2 minutes ago. Seems like a better measure than releases, different projects have different release cadences.

wduquette5d ago

You say “dead”, I say “stable”. Not everyone wants to base their work on a moving target.

jamwise5d ago

But the repo has had fairly consistent commits since then. Not huge activity, but not sure I'd call it dead.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse