Is there an implicit algorithm for how this language is evaluated? It seems hard to use without having an understanding of the likely performance of your code.
There is an implicit algorithm, and I'm so happy about this question. The inability to reason about likely performance of one's code is, to me, one of the things that bothers me most about Answer Set Programming, the programming paradigm that's probably the most like Finite-Choice Logic Programming.
The Dusa implementation has a couple of ways to reason at a high level about the performance of programs. The academic paper that febin linked to elsethread spends a fair amount of time talking about this, and if you really want to dig in, I recommend searching the paper for the phrases "deduce, then choose" and "cost semantics".
There's work to do in helping non-academics who just want to use Dusa reason about program performance, so I appreciate your comment as encouragement to prioritize that work when I have the chance.
The Dusa implementation has a couple of ways to reason at a high level about the performance of programs. The academic paper that febin linked to elsethread spends a fair amount of time talking about this, and if you really want to dig in, I recommend searching the paper for the phrases "deduce, then choose" and "cost semantics".
There's work to do in helping non-academics who just want to use Dusa reason about program performance, so I appreciate your comment as encouragement to prioritize that work when I have the chance.