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RE: RE: Declarative programming requires a different mindset

• From: "Michael Sokolov" <sokolov@ifactory.com>
• To: "'Michael Kay'" <mike@saxonica.com>, "'Mukul Gandhi'" <gandhi.mukul@g...>, <xml-dev@l...>
• Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2010 08:27:42 -0400

Postscript is an interesting case - I am told that it is Turing-complete,
but its uses are almost entirely declarative: for layout, akin to HTML.
Perhaps someone more knowledgeable about PS on this list would care to
comment on how that came to be?

-Mike

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Kay [mailto:mike@saxonica.com] 
> Sent: Sunday, April 11, 2010 5:18 AM
> To: 'Mukul Gandhi'; xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Cc: 'Liam Quin'; 'Costello, Roger L.'
> Subject: RE:  RE: Declarative programming requires a 
> different mindset
> 
> > But I agree, that XHTML is not a programming language (but 
> > interestingly, I think, XSLT is -- because it allows us to 
> express, a 
> > sequence of instructions, which are processable by machines).
> 
> I think that in common usage, the term "programming language" 
> means a language that is computationally complete 
> (Turing-complete). On that definition, XSLT and XQuery are 
> certainly programming languages, while XSD and XHTML are not.
> 
> (The notion of a "sequence of instructions processible by 
> machines" isn't needed to make this distinction.)
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Michael Kay
> http://www.saxonica.com/
> http://twitter.com/michaelhkay 
> 
> 
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• References:
  • RE: RE: Declarative programming requires a different mindset
    • From: "Michael Kay" <mike@saxonica.com>