Will learning Prolog help to learn Erlang in a way specific to Erlang? Erlang started as a concurrent Prolog, but is modern Erlang connected to Prolog (beyond syntax)? I understand that learning Prolog might be good in the way learning Lisp is good for programming in any language, but I want to know if learning Prolog will help me to learn Erlang specifically, given Prolog's role in Erlang's "origin story".
+12
A:
No, it won't.
is modern Erlang connected to Prolog (beyond syntax)
No, they pretty much have nothing in common.
Alexey Romanov
2010-08-22 19:53:58
+5
A:
It might even make it harder. Major thing that Prolog has but Erlang lacks is backtracking. It means that the program can "go back". It takes some time to get used to backtracking and let the language do the work for you. For instance traversing a graph using backtracking. When you switch to Erlang you have to forget all this.
They both share very common pattern matching style of programming.
I do not recommend learning Prolog prior to Erlang.
Towhans
2010-08-23 12:09:12