The Distinguished Professor at the IMDEA Software Institute and full Prof. of Computer Science at T.U. Madrid (UPM), Manuel Hermenegildo, gave a keynote at the Software Engineering and Software Development Technologies Society (SISTEDES) Conference, organized by the COGRADE group of the Universty of Santiafo de Compostela’s Singula Center of Research in Intelligent Technologies, which was held this year in Santiago de Compostela from September 5 to 7.

The SISTEDES 2022 Conference includes the XXVI Software Engineering and Data Bases Conference (JISBD), the XVII Science and Engineering Services Conference (JCIS) and the XXI Programming and Languages Conference (PROLE).

In this edition, Manuel Hermenegildo, gave a keynote speech in the framework of the PROLE, on Wednesday, September 7, from 11:00 to 12:30. “Prolog turns 50, long live Prolog!” was the title of the lecture. 2022 has been declared the “Year of Prolog” not only to celebrate this anniversary but for the fact that, after all these years, Prolog and logic programming are still relevant for high-level programming and symbolic and explainable AI, with numerous implementations that continue to evolve, and new ones appearing continuously.

In this talk, Hermenegildo reviewed the evolution of Prolog over the years and the current state of the language and its implementations, followed by some thoughts on challenges and opportunities for the future. He also explained how they address some of these challenges in their Ciao Prolog system. Finally, he provided some ideas on how to teach Prolog and Logic Programming in general.