"don't get anything other than the HTML that you create" that's the point of declarative languages

"That is, it is not generating anything." if you speak about code generation like code behind in VS, it has nothing do with the paradigm. If you speak about underlying technology, it does not matter. In case of declarative languages, the framework determines what the language is capable of. And that's the point of them, they are generalizing the solution for common problems. The browser do a lot of things in the background when it draws a rectangle the same way how SQL server is doing a lot things when you execute a query, but these things have nothing to do with programming paradigm, which can be understood without computers.

Imperative: cooking recipe

Functional: assembly line in a factory

Declarative: your assistant

(compare the real world examples to the things i mentioned)

> SQL is far and away understood as a declarative language for what data you want out of a relational database. I challenge you to find any literature that does not describe it as a declarative language.

Ok, and I challenge you to compare HTML and SQL. Are they the same by nature. Are the steps, the approach of problem solving is the same? Because if SQL is declarative, than it is really similar to HTML

> Now, can we munge definitions and pull in an odd true scotsman argument about it not being a "true declarative" language? I mean, yeah. But, this is like arguing that LISP is not a functional language by some specific modern view of that term. Certainly true, but far from useful. And almost certainly not what anyone you would talk to expects from those terms.

We are speaking about semantics and taxonomy here. These kind of a questions are always debatable, so i can't really say anything about this, because you are speaking of ways of discussion. What i'm saying that my taxonomy makes the most sense to me, and if someone truly can challenge it, it's gonna make my mind change, but "literature mentions it somehow else" is not an argument makes me change my mind.

Comparing to html is nonsensical. Period. It is not instructions on how to do anything, but markup of a document. Would be akin to asking if a bitmap is declarative. It is literally the data. It is not a declaration of what you want, but is a definition of what you have. In that vein, you would need a new taxonomy of "definitive" languages.

And again, I get where you are wanting to go. But you are literally arguing against all literature on sql. And your definition of declarative is restricted to only markup languages, evidently. Prolog would also not be declarative, by this view. Which is akin to arguing lisp is not functional. Technically true. The least useful way of being true.

If you want to know why sql is declarative, consider, how is a join performed? Table scan, hash join, merge? Yes, there are many ways to poke at the query plan, but that is like claiming c is assembly because there are extensions.

Even for the ddl statements, how is an insert actually performed into the backing store? When you create an index, what is created? How is the data copied to it? How is the data stored at all? Btree? Something else?

"Comparing to html is nonsensical" No, absoltely not. We are speaking about programming paradigms. We can speak about those without computers, we never have to speak about HTML. A food recipe is a program, what you are executing when you cook, and it is imperative. Going to the restaurant you can achieve the same (the dish) but in a declarative way.

But I compare SQL and HTML for you. In both cases you are creating a text/a script in order to achieve something. The way how you achieve this can be really different in HTML and SQL. You can create a chess algo in SQL, but you cannot in HTML (purely), because in case of declarative language the framework around it strongly limits what the language could do. How would you explain this, if SQL and HTML are the same by nature? Focus on the text you write, because that is your product. Where is a condition is HTML, and why there is not?

Bitmap (like all data: xml, csv, whatever) is not a language in a classical understanding, but if you wanna make it, yes, they are purely declarative.

"It is not a declaration of what you want, but is a definition of what you have" Nope, i can define this without having a computer:

imperative: cooking recipe

functional: assembly line in a factory

declarative: your assistant. or let's make SQL declarative: you ask chatgpt to write a query, and define this query in english

"declarative is restricted to only markup languages" no, the form of the language is irrelevant. CSS is not markup, but still declarative.

Elements of languages cannot be declarative or not, you can only describe the entire language as such, because we are speaking about programming paradigms.

C is assembly at the end of the day, as everything else for the computer itself, but this is irrelevant here. From purely imperative, which is basically machine code to purely declarative (maybe chatgpt?) it's a scale, you put everything somewhere. Functional programming is syntax sugar over iterative, but it's really important one, as it changes how your mind try to solve problems. So basically what I'm saying everything is an abstraction over another one, down below the machine code, but this is just how thing works, not how you use your brain to solve things. I'm saying all this, because not the technical details, the implementations behind is the point when we speak about a purely theoretical classification which programming paradigm is.

You keep retreading the same ground. Have you actually gone out and researched why so many people are telling you that SQL is declarative? Right now, it is reading as though you are being willfully ignorant of the entire field.

Worse than just ignoring the entire field. You are caught up in a strict taxonomy that just doesn't work. Cooking recipes are, amusingly, mixed. They are a declaration of all ingredients and supplies you will need, with an often hybrid list of instructions on how to mix them. Would I declare them as fully declarative? No, but nor would I declare that they are imperative only. That is a part.

And again, your definition of functional versus imperative versus declarative will get you in some amusing historical binds. With how strict you are trying to be, literally no programming language is declarative. Even haskel has do notation.

Please give some effort to understand why so many people are telling you you are wrong. You are not wrong, in that if you expand the concept of SQL to everything that is possible with the language today, there are concepts that are not declarative in it. You are sadly misguided in thinking that makes your point. Would be like my sneaking in the "script" tag to laugh at how HTML is not declarative. It is a markup language, not a programming one. And people have done a lot to add to it so that it can do more than it originally could. Often out of necessity to get stuff done.

You taking apart languages, saying this is imperative part and this is declarative. That does not make sense only entire languages can be described like that.

But if you want: In the recipe the ingredients can be "int y;", like declaration, or something else like malloc() Stating that i will need something is not declarative programming. Declarative is defining the end result. So none of the ingredients or the declaration are declarative programming (if you want to turn recipe to declarative, you go to a restaurant), but as i told, you can't do this with elements of languages, it just does not make sense.

In practice language paradigms can overlap related to concrete products. You can use (and actually should) c# for functional programming, but that does not make the language functional, the fundamental design is imperative. In the future, everything will be declarative (chatgpt is the first glimpse), so in some way we're just wasting our time here. Also, speaking about AI, model training does not fit any of the current paradigms, it's gonna be a new one, and maybe the only one, who knows...

Declarative: giving your order to the waiter and having the food returned to you fully prepared.

SQL: describing the subsets of related data you want and not caring if that data is on disk, in memory, indexed, located on another server, or calculated on the fly. The engine (wait staff and cooks) figure out the "how" and return what you've ordered/queried.

Ergo SQL is a declarative language.