Coding and Logic in Schools: Developing Soft Skills with PROLOG

Abstract

This paper introduces to a different and often forgotten approach to computer programming: the Logic Programming.

Computer programming is today an important teaching tool as well as a technical tool for software development. It is constantly evolving and, in the light of new artificial intelligence tools, undergoing in deep changes as regards human intervention and the ability to fully understand the new computational models, which are ever closer to human thought patterns.

Exploring, therefore, not only the classical paradigms of Imperative Programming, but also those of Declarative Programming, and in particular Logic Programming, has become an important way to pursue a full, non-selective, development of computational thinking aspects.

Logic Programming and the PROLOG programming language allow us to let learners develop essential elements of rigorous logical analysis and backward computational thinking paths, starting from the result up to its constituent elements.