GoKawiilProlog Basics Explained with Pokémon
January 05, 2026
The project that inspired this post is a little silly—I am about to describe the mechanics of a children’s video game in great detail—but this particular problem is what finally made Prolog click for me, an epiphany I’ve been hunting for ever since reading Bruce Tate’s “Seven Languages in Seven Weeks.”
This exercise has taught me a lot about the kinds of interfaces I’m trying to build in somewhat more practical domains. For certain kinds of relationships, logic programming is by far the most concise and expressive programming system I’ve ever used.
To understand why, let’s talk about Pokémon.
Pokémon is a video game series/multimedia franchise/lifestyle brand set in a world where humans live alongside a menagerie of colorful animal characters.
“Pokémon” is both the name of the franchise and the generic term for the animal characters themselves, which all have their own individual species names. There are over a thousand distinct species of Pokémon, from Bulbasaur (#1) to Pecharunt (#1025).
Popular Pokémon include (from left to right):
Pikachu (#25), Archeops (#567) , and Dipplin (#1101).
I rarely include images on this blog and I am very excited that this post warrants them.
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