Programming paradigm

Programming paradigm is a style or "way" of programming. Some languages make it easy to write in some paradigms but not others. Never force a programming language to fit a paradigm it was not designed for.

Overview

A programming paradigm is a fundamental style of computer programming. Paradigms differ in the concepts and abstractions used to represent the elements of a program (such as objects, functions, variables, constraints) and the steps that compose a computation (such as assignations, evaluation, continuations, data flows).

History

The first programming paradigm was probably the machine code paradigm, where programmers directly wrote sequences of numbers to represent computations. This was followed by the assembly language paradigm, which allowed programmers to use symbolic representations of machine code.

Types of Programming Paradigms

There are several different types of programming paradigms used in the industry today. Some of the most common ones include:

• Procedural programming: This is a type of programming where the logic of the program is built around procedures or routines. The main focus is on the process rather than data.

• Object-oriented programming: This paradigm is centered around objects and data rather than logic and procedures. It's one of the most commonly used paradigms today.

• Functional programming: This paradigm treats computation as the evaluation of mathematical functions and avoids changing-state and mutable data.

• Logic programming: This paradigm is primarily used in artificial intelligence and mathematical programming. It's based on formal logic and allows you to express computations declaratively.

• Concurrent programming: This paradigm is designed for programs that are made up of many active processes. It's often used in operating systems and real-time systems.

See Also

• Comparison of programming paradigms
• Programming language
• Software development methodology