Mercury needs a Tutorial

[Leon Smith]

I happen to be looking for a tutorial on Mercury.  Browsing the mailing
list archives, I found the messages attached at the end of this email.

I first ran across Mercury a year or two ago. I was rather interested in
learning it, especially as a venue to learning about logic programming in
general.  I am experienced with imperative and functional programming.
However, I am finding it very difficult to learn Mercury without already
being knowledgable on logic programming.  

I don't really have the time or energy to learn Prolog so I can then learn
Mercury.  Besides, I would like to learn the benefits of Mercury from the
start, instead of merely tacking them on afterwards.  I have found it
extremely helpful in the past.  For example, I learned ML and Haskell
before I learned Lisp.  I found that Haskell gave me a solid understanding
of ideas that were invaluable in learning Lisp. 

A tutorial would allow interested people to become users.  I believe that
this would then substantially increase interest in Mercury.  (For example,
I tend to evangelize for languages I like, such as Haskell and Modula-3.) 

I'd like to point out that people trying to learn Mercury are pressed for
time as well.  I'm not saying get the tutorial done at the cost of a
Master's Thesis, but it needs to be a fairly high priority.  What is the
point of a great logic programming language that most of the world can't
access?  

Could some knowledgeable undergrad write the tutorial?

best,
leon

> From: Luke Evans <Luke.Evans at seagatesoftware.com>
> To: mercury-users at cs.mu.OZ.AU
> Subject: Mercury Language Tutorial
> Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1999 11:46:10 -0800
> 
> I was wondering if anyone has considered (or is even working on) a Mercury
> Language Tutorial?  I get the impression that a document with a simple
> approach to the language, from the ground up (only assuming exposure to
> imperative languages or something) would help bootstrap interest in the
> language.  I appreciate that, on the whole at the moment, the language is
> being used by those for whom many of the concepts are already well
> established.  A well structured tutorial would let anyone 'join' the stream
> of information at whatever point their knowledge waned.  Of course there's
> nothing better for learning a new language than just getting 'stuck in', but
> directed learning is very helpful sometimes.
> 
> Luke

 
> Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1999 15:51:29 +1100
> From: Peter Ross <petdr at cs.mu.OZ.AU>
> To: mercury-users at cs.mu.OZ.AU
> Subject: Re: [mercury-users] Mercury Language Tutorial
> 
> Hi Luke,
> 
> We would love nothing better then to have a 'Gentle introduction to
> Mercury'.  The problem is that we don't have anyone with the time to do
> it.
> 
> Most of the people working on Mercury actively are graduate students,
> who only have a finite amount of time to get their thesis submitted in,
> and unfortunately a tutorial can't be included as part of our work.
> 
> So if there is anyone out there interested in writing a tutorial, please
> let us know.
> 
> Pete.