Well, that’s my point exactly. If declarative in essence is just about abstraction then it’s vacuous. What continues to be difficult for me to see is what defines a declarative abstraction precisely. In my judgment most existing definitions are not cogent, and the examples too non-specific.
The definition you’re getting out is more promising, and maybe I need to read through some of this material more closely, but this still sounds a bit too general and too specific at the same time. It clearly is something different than what most people seem to mean by it, which is frankly the use I have the most problems with. It might be there is a proper use of this term that has been diluted more and more as its use has spread, especially into the BE.
I mean, it doesn’t have to be 
but yes in the last decade or two the pursuit of more UI features has made the web a lot more complex on the FE (personally not thrilled tbh). One way to rephrase my question might be, what is it about this new FE complexity has given so much force to the concept of “declarative” programming? How does the term itself help steer us in the right directions when making architectural decisions on the FE? Even between frameworks?
I have been locked into React for years, but I’ve really like the spirit of what I’ve seen of htmx (not in small part due to my affection for the grug brained manifesto from the author–definitely my favorite software engineering manifesto). I suppose a lot of people would say it’s not declarative, but I’m not sure if I should care or not lol
