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Tide uses relation declarations as its core abstraction.

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Why not “functions”?

A normal function story quickly pulls in a lot of machinery:
  • return values vs side effects
  • purity vs IO
  • modules/imports
  • a growing standard library
Tide starts with something simpler: rules. A relation reads like a set of clauses: 
relation abs where
  abs(x) = x  when x >= 0
  abs(x) = -x when x < 0
This gives you:
  • pattern matching by default
  • clear top-to-bottom selection (first match wins)
  • a natural way to express multiple cases
You can use relations like functions: 
query abs(-5) // 5
In other words: Tide doesn’t hate functions — it just picks a cleaner default.