The Declarative Past and Imperative Future: Executable Temporal Logic for Interactive Systems

We propose a new paradigm in executable logic, that of the declarative past and imperative future. A future statement of temporal logic can be understood in two ways: the declarative way, that of describing the future as a temporal extension; and the imperative way, that of making sure that the future will happen the way we want it. Since the future has not yet happened, we have a language which can be both declarative and imperative. We regard our theme as a natural meeting between the imperative and declarative paradigms.