[Haskell-cafe] Wikipedia on first-class object

[Derek Elkins]

On Sun, 2008-01-06 at 13:48 -0800, Jonathan Cast wrote:
> On 6 Jan 2008, at 1:31 PM, jerzy.karczmarczuk at info.unicaen.fr 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.)