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Re: 2007 Predictions

• From: Rick Marshall <rjm@z...>
• To: Len Bullard <cbullard@h...>
• Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2007 14:33:31 +1100

but it is a mix. Declarative is the best by a country mile for 
describing single processes/operations and procedural is the correct way 
to glue the pieces together.

* If * someone comes up with a good declarative language for petri nets 
then maybe we can do away with procedural altogether (at least at the 
coder level) but until then...

However programmers are, by definition, control freaks so they will 
always prefer procedural to declarative and that will always determine 
the outcome of the argument.

Rick

Len Bullard wrote:
> Or you get wire wheels with a spinner that comes off if you don't tighten it
> enough.  See Alpines and MGs.  Well, at least in Britain.  In America, we
> use nails and bolts.  They never come off.  Ever.
>
> The declarative vs procedural bit is more interesting though.  That can't
> just be a trend.  There are tradeoffs there.  Is it a lifecycle phase? It
> seems to me that things start out procedural and only become declarative at
> the point where the data is reasonably known and scoped.  This should be
> particularly true of standards where getting it wrong early has a cost later
> in that the tree gets very bushy with variants.   
>
> That is the position the youngun's are taking on the X3D list and given our
> experience with premature standards, it is hard to disagree.  So is the
> reason that procedural is more flexible and it is better to keep it
> complicated until simplification is obvious (which would contradict the more
> trendy programming methods of late)?  
>
> Save the 'its always a mix anyway' thread killers until someone really can't
> figure this one out.  That's an admission there is no difference.
>
> Any takers?
>
> len
>
>
> From: Michael Champion [mailto:mc@x...] 
>
> Yeah, but as Douglas Crockford so memorably put it "The good thing about
> reinventing the wheel is that you can get a round one."
> http://scripting.wordpress.com/2006/12/20/scripting-news-for-12202006/#comme
> nt-26383  Each generation of this stuff is a bit rounder.
>
>   
>> On the other hand, I wonder about everything becoming declarative.  It
>>     
> seems reasonable 
>   
>> to those of us who are old enough to remember ...
>>     
>
> Agreed. The declarative vs procedural discussion has been hot on and off
> since at least the 1970s 
>
> http://search.live.com/results.aspx?FORM=&q=declarative+procedural+controver
> sy 
> http://www.google.com/search?q=declarative+procedural+controversy 
>
> Web 1.0 pushed the pendulum toward the declarative (SQL + XSLT) side, Web
> 2.0 made the world safe for imperative Javascript, now XQueryP is proposed
> to nudge XQuery in the imperative direction and LINQ is moving C# and VB in
> the declarative direction.  That thing isn't going to stop swinging anytime
> soon.
>
>
>
>
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>   

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: 2007 Predictions
    • From: Elliotte Harold <elharo@m...>

• References:
  • RE: 2007 Predictions
    • From: "Len Bullard" <cbullard@h...>