What is the difference between imperative and declarative languages




















You should analyze the code to see what this code does, as if you were an interpreter. Imperative programming is probably the most widely spread paradigm. The main characteristics of such programming languages are direct assignments, common data structures, and global variables.

It calculates factorial using recursion:. But despite the high popularity level, we have to admit that imperative programming languages can be non-scalable and sometimes too complicated. The term Declarative programming is often used as an opposite to the Imperative programming. Shortly speaking, this paradigm allows you to declare WHAT you want to be done. This style of developing implies description of the logic of computation but not its control flow.

By describing only the result that you want to get from the application instead of the ways of reaching this result , you can minimize unwanted side effects. Developers describe the results they want to get without explicit description of required steps.

In the case of declarative language and with the use of the React library, it may take the following form:. We just say what we want our application to do. When you use one of those, you just describe your goals without specifying how you want to achieve them. For example:. The declarative programming paradigm is much simpler to understand and much safer to use. Many declarative implementations have some sort of imperative abstraction layer.

Developers are spoilt for choices as there are several languages available to choose. But we can classify all of them into two buckets - declarative and imperative programming. Do you know as a programmer you would have used both types of paradigms without even being familiar with these terms.

Remember this - if we use both imperative and declarative syntax, then the programming language you are using is most probably a multi-paradigm language.

However, one must know the differences between declarative and imperative programming to identify the differences between functional, procedural, and OOP styles. We can call a programming paradigm declarative programming if it can express computation logic without describing the control flow.

Languages that fall under the declarative paradigm are functional, logical, and domain-specific languages. The main focus of the declarative code is to build the software logic without its flow description.

Several programming languages use this paradigm to eliminate the side effects of programming. It focuses on describing the accomplishment of the program in the problem domain rather than describing the approach. For example, suppose we have a button and we want to change the color of it.

Here is a program to do this in React. The declarative paradigm of coding can also massively reduce code complexity. The declarative paradigm gives programmers the flexibility to implement unknown methods during the programming time. We can easily optimize the code using declarative programming as an algorithm that controls the implementation. Using the declarative paradigm, programmers can get the opportunity to construct code that they can use for different purposes in the future.

It is tough to personalize codes as per requirement in declarative programming as it depends on the implementation of an algorithm. Declarative programming has a complex syntax. Thus, it is considerably hard to modify the programs.

Declarative programming tools are more complex to operate. Some declarative programs require you to be more specific to carry out complicated algorithms and functions.

Imperative programming uses some statements which can change the state of the program. An imperative program has multiple commands for a system to execute. It always focuses on the operational procedure of a program. In this, programmers use typical code styles including mutable states and loops. Programmers have to follow step by step instructions to write an imperative program. Here the instructions are not detailed, but someone needs to mention the steps for finishing the program.

Programmers can easily adopt the structure of imperative programming. A beginner can easily learn and read imperative programming codes. This is normally the type of thing I skip over — a not so good habit of mine. Give me the code samples already! But as someone who started learning React soon out of college, I was often thinking about problems incorrectly. College CS can be an exercise is writing hacky scripts to solve one off problems.

That was great for my coding interviews, but not so great for web development at scale. According to The Information :. Declarative programming is a programming paradigm … that expresses the logic of a computation without describing its control flow. Before I get too far though, I want to stress that there is nothing wrong with either of these approaches. They absolutely have strengths and weaknesses, but one approach will always be right.

Declarative Programming is like asking your friend to draw a landscape. Imperative Programming is like your friend listening to Bob Ross tell them how to paint a landscape. And our declarative React example:. The differences here may be subtle. The React example never actually touches an element.



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