Position statement for the ALP Executive Committee nomination

Péter Szeredi


I have been working in logic programming for the last thirty years. I led the development of two major Prolog implementations in Hungary (the "Hungarian" Prolog in 1975, and the MProlog system during 1980-1986). Between 1987 and 1996 I worked on the Aurora or-parallel Prolog system, my contributions covered scheduling, performance analysis, language extensions, and interfacing aspects of the system. In the last ten years I focused on teaching (constraint) logic programming and on using (C)LP in various applications. In this period I also took part in the development of SICStus Prolog, e.g. I worked on making SICStus ISO-Prolog conformant.

I organised the Debrecen Logic Programming Workshop in 1980, served as a Program Co-Chair for ICLP'90, and the General Chair of ICLP'93. I was on the ALP EC between 1997 and 2000. In 1997 I was honoured, as one of the founders of the field, by the permanent membership of the Organising Committee for Logic Programming Conferences.

Throughout the last 30 years I worked at research institutes, universities and commercial companies, and managed to keep LP as my main focus :-). At present, I work as an Associate Professor at Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary.

I think it is important to improve the "image" of Logic Programming in both the commercial and the academic world, to get through the message that LP is a mature technology which is used various commercial applications. I was surprised, several times in the past few years, to encounter Prolog inside commercial software products, from document handling to transport management... Some years ago we had the "Prolog 1000" initiative for collecting (1000) Prolog applications, maybe this is worth continuing?

I believe that the clarity and elegance of logic programming will get more and more appreciated in the coming years, especially when issues like program correctness get higher priority. I think that our discipline has a lot to contribute to e.g. the Grand Challenge of the Verifying Compiler.

I was very happy to participate in the first Workshop on Teaching Logic Programming, during ICLP 2004. I think we should continue this exchange of ideas in order to improve LP education. I would be especially happy to see the Web-based LP teaching resources expand and get better organised.

If elected to Executive Committee of ALP I would promote the above ideas.