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Theory & background

Here you will find all kind of how-to instructions to help you get going with Ampersand.

📄️ Why declarative?

What is a doughnut? If we first make some dough, then shape it into a circle, and then fry it, that gives us a doughnut. I can also just say that a doughnut is a toroid-shaped, fried piece of dough. The former is called a procedural or imperative description, which we know from cooking \(e.g. a recipe for making apple pie\) or in the process industry \(a method for extracting nitrogen from the air\), for example. The latter is called declarative, examples of which are a blueprint of the Tower Bridge in London, a city map of Antwerp in 1572, the law that defines the national registry of persons in the Netherlands \(called BRP\), and a conceptual model. The distinction between defining \(by constraints\) and making \(by giving steps\) is known in patent law, e.g. for a chemical substance as opposed to the process of making that substance.