Declarativeness: the work done by something else

TL;DR

This paper argues that declarativeness in programming fundamentally involves automating computational work, emphasizing its role as the core of programming and exploring its implications for teaching through a study of Clojure examples.

Contribution

It presents a new perspective that declarativeness is central to programming, supported by a systematic analysis of novice coding examples in Clojure.

Findings

Declarativeness simplifies programming by automating computational work.

Using Clojure makes declarative concepts accessible to beginners.

Declarative approaches enhance understanding and teaching of programming.

Abstract

Being declarative means that we do computer programming on higher levels of abstraction. This vague definition identifies declarativeness with the act of ignoring details, but it is a special case of abstraction. The unspecified part is some computational work. Automating computations and offloading mental processing are essentially the same concept, which is fundamental for both computational and mathematical thinking. This shows that declarativeness is not just a particular style, but it is the core idea of programming. Here we demonstrate this argument and examine its consequences for teaching by a systematic study of coding examples from an introductory programming course. The chosen language is Clojure, as it is proven to be accessible for novices.