Imperative vs. Declarative

I came across this beautifully detailed post, Imperative vs. Declarative by Philip Roberts, and wanted to share my thoughts on the Ruby-way of things (and hopefully get it right).

So as Philip explains it:

• Imperative Programming: Telling the “machine” how to do something, and as a result what you want to happen will happen
• Declarative Programming: Telling the “machine” what you would like to happen, and let the computer figure out how to do it

(Where ‘Machine’ is Computer/database/programming language/etc)

Imperative

Suppose, you have an array of numbers and you want to double every value. If you have recently started Ruby, you’ll probably try doing things the old way; i.e. Iterating over the array, and doubling each value:

nums = [1,2,3,4,5]
dubs = []

for n in nums
  dubs << n * 2
end

or maybe if you already know about each, you’ll go about doing it this way:

nums = [1,2,3,4,5]
dubs = []

nums.each do |n|
    dubs << n * 2
end

Declarative

Now, the Ruby way of doing things is different (which also happens to be Declarative BTW):

nums = [1,2,3,4,5]
dubs = nums.map { |n| n * 2  }

I on the other hand would take this a level higher to show how cool I am:

class Integer
  def double
    self * 2
  end
end


nums = [1,2,3,4,5]
dubs = nums.map(&:double)

Also this: