Designing across domains with declarative thinking: Insights from the 96-Eyes ptychographic imager project

TL;DR

This paper discusses applying declarative problem formulation (5GL) to complex imaging system design, demonstrating benefits in transparency and stakeholder alignment through the 96-Eyes project case study.

Contribution

It provides practical insights and real-world examples of using 5GL for interdisciplinary system design, highlighting benefits and barriers in adopting declarative approaches.

Findings

Declarative problem formulation improves transparency and traceability.

Formalizing requirements reduces misalignment across teams.

Challenges exist in transitioning from imperative programming paradigms.

Abstract

This article presents a practitioner's reflection on applying declarative, 5th generation, problem formulation language (5GL) to de novo imaging system design, informed by experiences across the interdisciplinary research in academia and cross-functional product development within the private sector. Using the 96-Eyes project: 96-camera parallel multi-modal imager for high-throughput drug discovery as a representative case, I illustrate how project requirements, ranging from hardware constraints to life sciences needs, can be formalized into machine-readable problem statements to preserve mission-critical input from diverse domain stakeholders. This declarative approach enhances transparency, ensures design traceability, and minimizes costly misalignment across optical, algorithmic, hardware-accelerated compute, and life sciences teams. Alongside the technical discussion of 5GL with real-world code examples, I reflect on the practical barriers to adopting 5GL in environments where imperative, 3rd-generation languages (3GL) remain the default medium for inter-team collaboration. Rather than offering an one-size-fits-all solution, these learned lessons highlight how programming paradigms implicitly shapes research workflows through existing domain hierarchies. The discussion aims to invite further explorations into how declarative problem formulations can facilitate innovation in settings where concurrent R\&{}D workflows are gaining traction, as opposed to environments where sequential, phase-driven workflows remain the norm.