Some network teams are finding power and simplicity in the shift from telling devices what to do, using imperative programming, to describing what they should be, using declarative programming.

This Java release effectively notified developers that it’s no longer sufficient to think about Java programming only from the imperative ... with the declarative style; both use expressions ...

Classic programming involves instructing the computer which steps to take to solve a problem. For example, to add up the numbers in a list, an imperative ... preference is a declarative approach.