In university, Learning prolog was my first encounter with the idea that my IQ may not be as high as I thought
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But some parts, like e.g. the cut operator is something I've copied several times over for various things. A couple of prototype parser generators for example - allowing backtracking, but using a cut to indicate when backtracking is an error can be quite helpful.
Elmore Leonard, on writing. But he might as well have been talking about the cut operator.
At uni I had assignments where we were simply not allowed to use it.