002 - Paradigms for programming
Abstract
This paper presents a personal perspective on some of the issues raised at a Workshop on Functional and Logic Programming Languages at the University of Stirling on April 25th, 1986. It is particularly concerned with the question: Are purely declarative principles sufficient for general purpose computing applications? The consideration of notions of "computational" and "ambient" state in a programming system suggests possible limitations of purely declarative methods where interactive applications are concerned. An alternative framework for general purpose programming systems, based upon the author's work on "definitive notations", is briefly outlined.