• To: John Cowan <cowan@m...>, Mike Champion <mc@x...>
• Subject: Re: Limericks, Stupidity, and Reality (was Re: [ANN] XML Limerick Competition)
• From: Jonathan Robie <jonathan.robie@s...>
• Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2002 07:36:31 -0500
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <E16PEZS-00013m-00@m...>
• References: <93HFEAJH1X76P869OISRNL4F086UO.3c3f85e0@MChamp>

At 10:11 PM 1/11/2002 -0500, John Cowan wrote:
>Mike Champion scripsit:
>
> > Is it REALLY going to be easier for inhabitants of
> > the Real World to develop useful declarative schemas
> > than useful procedural code?   Educate me!
>
>IMHO (and I really mean MO), the chief advantage of declarative
>code is that it's not procedural, and therefore provides a
>cross-check.

Bingo.

>Whatever passes both a ruleset and hand-tailored
>code has a good chance of being correct, because although both
>of these need to be created by programmers (roughly defined as
>people who are capable of giving rigorous directions to intelligent
>morons, i.e. computers), and therefore are subject to error,
>the *kinds* of errors that people make writing each kind of code
>tend to be very different.

A second advantage is that declarative systems - which are, after all, tied 
to code - tend to allow for more reuse. If I have a way of declaring the 
metric feet for a limerick, I can reuse those declarations for a sonnet or 
an ode.

Jonathan

• References:
  • Limericks, Stupidity, and Reality (was Re: [ANN] XML LimerickCompetition)
    • From: Mike Champion <mc@x...>
  • Re: Limericks, Stupidity, and Reality (was Re: [ANN]XML Limerick Competition)
    • From: John Cowan <cowan@m...>

• Prev by Date: Re: Re: [ANN] XML Limerick Competition
• Next by Date: An Architecture for Limericks (was Limericks, Stupidity, and Reality)
• Previous by thread: Re: Limericks, Stupidity, and Reality (was Re: [ANN]XML Limerick Competition)
• Next by thread: An Architecture for Limericks (was Limericks, Stupidity, and Reality)
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread