On Sun, 2008-01-06 at 13:48 -0800, Jonathan Cast wrote: > On 6 Jan 2008, at 1:31 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > Derek Elkins writes: > >> Jonathan Cast wrote: > >>> I find the term `declarative' to be almost completely meaningless. > >> I was originally thinking of having the final sentence: "There are no > >> clear, accepted meanings for any of these terms." > > > > Clear, no. > > Accepted, yes. > > Let Jonathan Cast repeat that statement to people who organise > > conferences > > on Declarative Programming, or those who assembled: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declarative_programming > > http://burks.brighton.ac.uk/burks/foldoc/90/29.htm > > (or http://foldoc.org/foldoc.cgi?declarative+language) > > To quote your last citation: > > > declarative language: Any relational language or functional language. > > Yes, the term `declarative' means something in the sense that we can > tell whether any given language is declarative or not, so I should > have been more clear. To wit, I do not believe the term > `declarative' has any single referent, even in the sense that the > term `functional' has any single referent. I find the only > similarity between Haskell and Prolog to be that neither is imperative.
Indeed, you've discovered it. The definition of "declarative" is often "not imperative." (Or vice versa, where, as I said earlier, these are primarily defined by example rather than some predicate.) _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe