My favorite quirky computing book was something I found in the library by chance at my university when I should've been attending a Principles of Programming Languages course.
We'd been learning Prolog in class for the past two weeks but I'm terrible at learning from lectures, so eventually I decided it'd be a better use of my time to locate a book I could teach myself from rather than doodling in class.
IIRC it hadn't been checked out since the 80's: it was a slim volume on Prolog with an Alice in Wonderland theme. I can't remember the title or anything, but it was an enjoyable read, and effective: I still hadn't written any Prolog at the time of the exam—which I remember was 4 days out at the time I picked up the book— but I understood it well enough by then to solve all the problems without flaw including some extra credit challenge problem :)
That looks like a nice book, but definitely not it (I may read the datalog bits though—thanks!).
The one in the library was ~200 pages, solely on prolog, Alice in Wonderland not only on the cover art, but constantly used throughout the writing itself.
Following the numbered citation, I think this is the table of contents from a different book, originally published in Finnish by Jaak Henno, which would have an English title something like “It is simple with Prolog!”. He also seems to have published some of the content separately under the title “Prolog and Olympic Gods”.
How long ago did you check it out? If it was recent enough, then the library you checked it out from would have record of it. I'd love to know what the book was!
I've searched and searched and can't find any Prolog book that matches this description. Hopefully you're able to find or remember it.
Unfortunately it’s been about a decade and the library is in another state from where I now live. I did another round of searching myself and couldn’t turn anything up either :/
We'd been learning Prolog in class for the past two weeks but I'm terrible at learning from lectures, so eventually I decided it'd be a better use of my time to locate a book I could teach myself from rather than doodling in class.
IIRC it hadn't been checked out since the 80's: it was a slim volume on Prolog with an Alice in Wonderland theme. I can't remember the title or anything, but it was an enjoyable read, and effective: I still hadn't written any Prolog at the time of the exam—which I remember was 4 days out at the time I picked up the book— but I understood it well enough by then to solve all the problems without flaw including some extra credit challenge problem :)
Has anyone else come across this book?