Declarative vs Imperative - Vader Buys a Cake

Photo by TOMMY VAN KESSEL on Unsplash

There are 2 main programming paradigms:

• Declarative. What to do. Think SQL.
• Imperative. How to do it. Think C++.

🎂 Vader Buys A Cake

As a memory trick, let's imagine buying a chocolate cake with each approach.

• Declarative: You go to the bakery and declare you want one. You don't care how it gets done, you just want the final product.
• Imperative: You stand over the baker and tell him exactly what to do. The imperial march plays in the background.

Other Paradigms

Here's how a few other common approaches can be categorized: