In fact, the "old semantics" actually included language constructs that are only now becoming available (again) in Prolog systems.
An example of such a construct is dif/2, which is a constraint that was provided in even the very first Prolog system, sometimes called Prolog 0, several decades ago. However, it was not widely available in Prolog systems until much more recently, even though professional Prolog systems such as SICStus have provided it for longer. Also arithmetic constraints were available in early implementations such as Prolog IV. So, in a sense, we are now going "back to the roots" of Prolog by making very old features widely available.
In my personal view, calling modern Prolog an "incompatible paradigm" with the way that Prolog is still being taught is not completely fitting, yet still more right than wrong: The new features are not meant to be used "on top" of old features, but instead! When using modern Prolog features to their fullest extent, you can completely eschew those language constructs that traditionally cause the worst problems for beginners.
Moded arithmetic is a prime example for this, which can be replaced completely by arithmetic constraints in modern Prolog systems. dif/2 is also a good example, which lets you avoid (\+)/1 in many cases by using a more general predicate instead.
Due to their operational semantics that is very hard to explain and understand, rather limited constructs often take significant room in many Prolog courses, and replacing them by more modern alternatives will entail a paradigm shift towards better methods and also make room for even more new material that can be covered instead. This is because on top of being more general, the new language constructs are often also easier to understand for beginners.
> The new features are not meant to be used "on top" of old features, but instead!
That is very powerful indeed. From incompetently playing around with stuff like that, my impression was that "constraints everywhere" is also extremely slow. That's not surprising, there's a lot of machinery working below the surface to deliver all that power. To recover performance whenever the full generality of the paradigm is not needed, I expect we'd need to work hard, say very smart static analysis, or JIT specialization, or...
But certainly my incompetence made me miss a lot. If you know how "constraints everywhere" can be made "fast everywhere", I'd love to hear about it:-)
An example of such a construct is dif/2, which is a constraint that was provided in even the very first Prolog system, sometimes called Prolog 0, several decades ago. However, it was not widely available in Prolog systems until much more recently, even though professional Prolog systems such as SICStus have provided it for longer. Also arithmetic constraints were available in early implementations such as Prolog IV. So, in a sense, we are now going "back to the roots" of Prolog by making very old features widely available.
In my personal view, calling modern Prolog an "incompatible paradigm" with the way that Prolog is still being taught is not completely fitting, yet still more right than wrong: The new features are not meant to be used "on top" of old features, but instead! When using modern Prolog features to their fullest extent, you can completely eschew those language constructs that traditionally cause the worst problems for beginners.
Moded arithmetic is a prime example for this, which can be replaced completely by arithmetic constraints in modern Prolog systems. dif/2 is also a good example, which lets you avoid (\+)/1 in many cases by using a more general predicate instead.
Due to their operational semantics that is very hard to explain and understand, rather limited constructs often take significant room in many Prolog courses, and replacing them by more modern alternatives will entail a paradigm shift towards better methods and also make room for even more new material that can be covered instead. This is because on top of being more general, the new language constructs are often also easier to understand for beginners.