RE: [xml-dev] RE: Declarative programming requires a differentmindset

["Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>]

Gavin Thomas Nicol wrote:

> Functional programming is another name for this. 
> See the paper, "Why Functional Programming Matters" 
> http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~rjmh/Papers/whyfp.html 

Thanks for the pointer to the paper Gavin. It says that functional programming is about improved modularity and providing better ways to glue modules together:

    We shall argue in the remainder of this paper that 
    functional languages provide two new, very important
    kinds of glue. We shall give many examples of programs 
    that can be modularized in new ways, and thereby greatly 
    simplified. This is the key to functional programming's 
    power - it allows greatly improved modularisation. It is 
    also the goal for which functional programmers must 
    strive - smaller and simpler and more general modules, 
    glued together with the new glues we shall describe.

I see the benefits of this. However, is that really what declarative programming is about?
 
> Another way to look at it is that declarative programming 
> tends to look at programs as data, not as instructions... people 
> with a declarative mindset tend to generate and manipulate programs, 
> just as they would any other data. 

Now that seems (to me) to more accurately characterize declarative programming.

/Roger