Declarative Programming: Is It A Real Thing?

Today’s guest post from Toptal, a widely touted placement agency for talented freelance developers, was written by Federico Pereiro and can be found over on Toptal.com.

Declarative programming is, currently, the dominant paradigm of an extensive and diverse set of domains such as databases, templating and configuration management.

In a nutshell, declarative programming consists of instructing a program on what needs to be done, instead of telling it how to do it. In practice, this approach entails providing a domain-specific language (DSL) for expressing what the user wants, and shielding them from the low-level constructs (loops, conditionals, assignments) that materialize the desired end state.

While this paradigm is a remarkable improvement over the imperative approach that it replaced, I contend that declarative programming has significant limitations, limitations that I explore in this article. Moreover, I propose a dual approach that captures the benefits of declarative programming while superseding its limitations.

CAVEAT: This article emerged as the result of a multi-year personal struggle with declarative tools. Many of the claims I present here are not thoroughly proven, and some are even presented at face value. A proper critique of declarative programming would take considerable time, effort, and I would have to go back and use many of these tools; my heart is not in such an undertaking. The purpose of this article is to share a few thoughts with you, pulling no punches, and showing what worked for me. If you’ve struggled with declarative programming tools, you might find respite and alternatives. And if you enjoy the paradigm and its tools, don’t take me too seriously.

If declarative programming works well for you, I’m in no position to tell you otherwise.