Specificity is always on a scale. In most cases, you don't want to tell the computer exactly how to lay out the memory (common in imperative programming). In

Specificity is always on a scale. In most cases, you don't want to tell the computer exactly how to lay out the memory (common in imperative programming). In other cases, you don't want to tell the computer exactly what sequence to perform the operations in (common in functional programming). In other cases, you allow for contradictory information to be provided to the computer (common in constraint based programming). There's plenty of room for ambiguity or contradiction in programming, and good things happen on either end of the spectrum.