You are speak about things which called delegates, typed functions, defined by the parameters it gets, and the data it returns. Using delegates does not make a language functional. If you really want to speak about the underlying technology, than every high level language is declarative. You can draw a triangle by drawing three sides, or you can just put this in a function like drawtriangle(v1,v2,v3), and tadam, your language is declarative. The underlying tech is not important, the approach of the developer is important. See my longer answer above

Your comments in this thread have made for a pretty tough read, but I think your angle is finally made clear here.

Supposedly, “every high level language is declarative”.

It’s an opinion I suppose, but I doubt it’s one you’re going to find much support for. What I think this feels like to most people is that things aren’t what people think they are because you’ve decided to reimagine the commonly used definitions of the words used to describe those things.

Not sure if it’s a straw man exactly, but I feel like I’m in a straw man’s garden.

I'm sorry, i'm speaking with multiple people on multiple threads here, and don't have too much time to express myself perfectly. Every language is declarative is an interpretation that can make sense in certain angle, like when you use some imperative language, you create mini libraries for yourself, and that's already steps to a declarative variation, but this does not changes the fundamental design of the language.

But this is not my angle, i say the borders drawn up by the way how you, as a programmer, approach solving a problem. My take is declarative when you define the *end result* you want to get. You certainly don't do this with SQL, because that case the your product (what you write in the query) would be the end result set, the data itself. Of course in case of HTML you don't literally draw in the rectangle in the code, but you describe the end result. This is the difference.

Other arguments you wrote is out of scope for me regarding this conversation.

That's quite the slippery slope though.

You don't literally draw a rectangle with HTML, but you also don't tell the database's query planner how to do its job.

You're also not comparing things on equal terms. HTML isn't any kind of programming or scripting language.

If I understand you correctly, SQL would only be declarative if the user literally wrote the entire result set of the query. This would then obviate the need for SQL. The result set of a query is called "data". It's not a declarative language.

You're free to redefine terms, but as I mentioned, you're going to have a hard time finding people to agree with you.

Technical and implementation details again. When we speak about programming paradigm, we speak about the language alone, not any software system, this is a theoretical discussion. It does not matter how it is executed, what matter is how you express yourself in that language to achieve your goals.

There are no bits, bytes and cpus in this conversation. This is classification and taxonomy of artificial languages created for other purpose than communication between 2 persons.

In SQL you gives instruction in a functional way of thinking. Functional programming is a restricted variation of imperative one for a purpose the same way how object oriented programming is basically structured programming with restrictions imposed on the programmer (for a purpose again, and a very good reason for that). So fundamentally SQL is imperative, but the details of that completely hidden and therefore irrelevant.

In HTML you describe the result itself. So "SQL would only be declarative if the user literally wrote the entire result set of the query" is not completely, but somewhat true. The way how you define a result can vary, but SQL definitely does not do that. But the way how i can imagine SQL as declarative, if i "programming by example" or ask chatgpt to translate my natural language and create the query. But these are forced examples, because IMO SQL is absolutely not declarative, and cant really be.

If HTML is a programming language or not, it's debatable, but i think it's enough that is a language (programming or not) which is designed to describe a flow-kind of a text layout (like a word file) in the first versions, then other visible elements, so i think it's not completely, but kinda irrelevant question from the viewpoint of paradigm.

> this is a theoretical discussion

With all due respect, I don’t understand what your aim is with this discussion, and at this point I think I’m more confused than when we started. What is your aim here?

> If HTML is a programming language or not, it's debatable

I suppose to some degree, everything is debatable. But this point isn’t somewhere where we’re going to find common ground. Another commenter said it well — with HTML, you get what you write. It’s not a programming language.

In any case, I appreciate you taking the time to expand on your reasoning. I’m just still struggling to make heads or tails of it.

Thank you for actually listening and trying to communicate with me, instead of just shooting ad-lib responses like "it's in the textbook so that is that".

I don't really have an aim, I just made a simple statement, and after that everything is back and forth. Classification of languages has no practical implication (or not too much), what it changes is how they are taught, like "INTRO TO PROGRAMMING 101 BEGINNER CLASS FOR DUMMIES"

>I suppose to some degree, everything is debatable.

I just wanted to say that i dont think it's important to decide if HTML is an actual programming language or not, I see it as a language that defines something for a computer. We can just put all alikes into the "Markup-not-programming-language" basket, and that invalidates all of my arguments. I feel in this case there is no big difference in functional/imperative vs declarative languages assuming most of the people's different-than-mine classification, so why even bother then?