Video/Declarative vs Imperative Approach
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
In this video, Milewski stated Category Theory's notation and its compositional rules allow mathematicians to think declaratively, vs. imperative reason that relies on algorithmic sequences. This observation helps to construct ideas that can be best shown in the following table:
| Concepts\Programming Style | Imperative | Declarative |
|---|---|---|
| Mathematical Semantics | Algorithmic Sequence | Category Theory |
| Scopes | Local | Global |
| Scientific Doctrines | Classical Physics | Quantum Physics |
| Scientific Doctrines | Action-Reaction | Stationary Action Principle |
| Analytical Modeling | Newtonian Mechanics | Lagrangian Mechanics |
| Infrastructure Automation | Ansible | Terraform |
The critical insight that must be noted is that Milewski presented a mental model by giving examples in physics, particularly mentioning Richard Feyman's realization of the fact that delcarative reasoning can be applied to solve many problems. Specifically, the notion of Stationary Action Principle/Principle of Least Action is in fact a style pf declarative reasoning.