4 ms·

I'm not too sure of what you mean. I think it stems from the fact that you are only looking at expressions, forgetting that these are just part of, possibly im

by aatd86 4y ago

I'm not too sure of what you mean. I think it stems from the fact that you are only looking at expressions, forgetting that these are just part of, possibly implicit statements. Basically, there is always an assignment. And that assignment is conditional. That means that you are effectively writing how something is being built instead of simply describing what it is. That is just not fully declarative. That's all.

eyelidlessness 4y ago
> I think it stems from the fact that you are only looking at expressions, forgetting that these are just part of, possibly implicit statements. Pretty close. I’m only looking at expressions because that’s how you can achieve anything declarative. To the point that there are statements (implicit or otherwise), they can’t be declarative whether you have conditions or otherwise. Because… > Basically, there is always an assignment. If you’re restricted to only expressions, this doesn’t matter, because assignment is inherently definitional and idempotent. Assignment with that constraint is logically the same as equality assertion. In fact, some implementations of this concept will literally error if you try to change an assignment. As in: a = b // okay, a is equal to b a = b // yep, this fact has been established, carry on a = c // if c isn’t equal, this will fail and nothing depending on a can proceed > That means that you are effectively writing how something is being built instead of simply describing what it is. Now I don’t understand. How can you define things without constraining what they are? If you don’t have a semantic “not”, every definition you could come up with is inherently the infinite set, even if you define all of the affirmative facts. Without some mechanism to distinguish Thing A from Thing B, you have effectively arrived at two definitions of Things.

by aatd86 4y ago

eyelidlessness 4y ago

> I think it stems from the fact that you are only looking at expressions, forgetting that these are just part of, possibly implicit statements. Pretty close. I’m only looking at expressions because that’s how you can achieve anything declarative. To the point that there are statements (implicit or otherwise), they can’t be declarative whether you have conditions or otherwise. Because… > Basically, there is always an assignment. If you’re restricted to only expressions, this doesn’t matter, because assignment is inherently definitional and idempotent. Assignment with that constraint is logically the same as equality assertion. In fact, some implementations of this concept will literally error if you try to change an assignment. As in: a = b // okay, a is equal to b a = b // yep, this fact has been established, carry on a = c // if c isn’t equal, this will fail and nothing depending on a can proceed > That means that you are effectively writing how something is being built instead of simply describing what it is. Now I don’t understand. How can you define things without constraining what they are? If you don’t have a semantic “not”, every definition you could come up with is inherently the infinite set, even if you define all of the affirmative facts. Without some mechanism to distinguish Thing A from Thing B, you have effectively arrived at two definitions of Things.