[mercury-users] Mercury needs a Tutorial

[Bas de Bakker]

>>>>> "Peter" == Peter Schachte <schachte at cs.mu.OZ.AU> writes:

    >> I've started out with "Hello, World!"  as is the tradition.
    Peter> I don't think this is a good way to start.

I don't like this approach.  Having to read and understand so much
before being able to compile and run a complete program is very
discouraging.

    Peter> I've found the family relationships example works pretty
    Peter> well to take you from database-y predicates through
    Peter> recursion.

I think the family relationships example is so far removed from
real-life programming problems that I (as a reader) would think: "This
looks like a toy language that can do funny things, but can it do
anything serious, too?".

Mercury will be easier to learn if you keep the link with what most
people know from imperative programming as long as possible.  This
means not introducing multi and nondet predicates quickly.  (semidet
is much easier, as it is similiar to (and indeed implemented as) a
subroutine returning a boolean value.)

Regards,
Bas.