What is the difference between declarative and imperative paradigm in programming?

I have been searching the web looking for a definition for declarative and imperative programming that would shed some light for me. However, the language used at some of the resources that I have found is daunting - for instance at Wikipedia. Does anyone have a real-world example that they could show me that might bring some perspective to this subject (perhaps in C#)?

A great C# example of declarative vs. imperative programming is LINQ.

With imperative programming, you tell the compiler what you want to happen, step by step.

For example, let's start with this collection, and choose the odd numbers:

List<int> collection = new List<int> { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 };

With imperative programming, we'd step through this, and decide what we want:

List<int> results = new List<int>();
foreach(var num in collection)
{
    if (num % 2 != 0)
          results.Add(num);
}

Here, we're saying:

1. Create a result collection
2. Step through each number in the collection
3. Check the number, if it's odd, add it to the results

With declarative programming, on the other hand, you write code that describes what you want, but not necessarily how to get it (declare your desired results, but not the step-by-step):

var results = collection.Where( num => num % 2 != 0);

Here, we're saying "Give us everything where it's odd", not "Step through the collection. Check this item, if it's odd, add it to a result collection."

In many cases, code will be a mixture of both designs, too, so it's not always black-and-white.

Declarative programming is when you say what you want, and imperative language is when you say how to get what you want.

A simple example in Python:

# Declarative
small_nums = [x for x in range(20) if x < 5]

# Imperative
small_nums = []
for i in range(20):
    if i < 5:
        small_nums.append(i)

The first example is declarative because we do not specify any "implementation details" of building the list.

To tie in a C# example, generally, using LINQ results in a declarative style, because you aren't saying how to obtain what you want; you are only saying what you want. You could say the same about SQL.

One benefit of declarative programming is that it allows the compiler to make decisions that might result in better code than what you might make by hand. Running with the SQL example, if you had a query like

SELECT score FROM games WHERE id < 100;

the SQL "compiler" can "optimize" this query because it knows that id is an indexed field -- or maybe it isn't indexed, in which case it will have to iterate over the entire data set anyway. Or maybe the SQL engine knows that this is the perfect time to utilize all 8 cores for a speedy parallel search. You, as a programmer, aren't concerned with any of those conditions, and you don't have to write your code to handle any special case in that way.

Declarative vs. Imperative

A programming paradigm is a fundamental style of computer programming. There are four main paradigms: imperative, declarative, functional (which is considered a subset of the declarative paradigm) and object-oriented.

Declarative programming : is a programming paradigm that expresses the logic of a computation(What do) without describing its control flow(How do). Some well-known examples of declarative domain specific languages (DSLs) include CSS, regular expressions, and a subset of SQL (SELECT queries, for example) Many markup languages such as HTML, MXML, XAML, XSLT... are often declarative. The declarative programming try to blur the distinction between a program as a set of instructions and a program as an assertion about the desired answer.

Imperative programming : is a programming paradigm that describes computation in terms of statements that change a program state. The imperative programs can be dually viewed as programming commands or mathematical assertions.

Functional programming : is a programming paradigm that treats computation as the evaluation of mathematical functions and avoids state and mutable data. It emphasizes the application of functions, in contrast to the imperative programming style, which emphasizes changes in state. In a pure functional language, such as Haskell, all functions are without side effects, and state changes are only represented as functions that transform the state.

The following example of imperative programming in MSDN, loops through the numbers 1 through 10, and finds the even numbers.

var numbersOneThroughTen = new List<int> { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 };
//With imperative programming, we'd step through this, and decide what we want:
var evenNumbers = new List<int>();
foreach (var number in numbersOneThroughTen)
{    if (number % 2 == 0)
    {
        evenNumbers.Add(number);
    }
}
//The following code uses declarative programming to accomplish the same thing.
// Here, we're saying "Give us everything where it's even"
var evenNumbers = numbersOneThroughTen.Where(number => number % 2 == 0);

Both examples yield the same result, and one is neither better nor worse than the other. The first example requires more code, but the code is testable, and the imperative approach gives you full control over the implementation details. In the second example, the code is arguably more readable; however, LINQ does not give you control over what happens behind the scenes. You must trust that LINQ will provide the requested result.