Programming Paradigms for Dummies: What Every Programmer Should Know (2009) [pdf]

Post by 1024core » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 5:28 PM UTC

ummonk wrote: post #53

sevensor wrote: post #52

> We end our discussion of inheritance with a cautionary tale. In the 1980s, a very large multinational company initiated an ambitious project based on object-oriented programming. Despite a budget of several billion dollars, the project failed miserably. One of the principal reasons for this failure was a wrong use of inheritance. Who did that, exactly?

I would have guessed Plan 9 just from the timing, but I'm not sure the failure there was due to the wrong use of inheritance.

Post by pier25 » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 5:39 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #32

tiniuclx wrote: post #2

An interesting point raised by this paper is that when a program requires pervasive modifications (e.g. checking the error code returned by C functions), adding a new concept to the language (e.g. C++ exceptions) can systematically make these changes unnecessary, therefore simplifying the program. Perhaps this is how programming language designers ought to vet language ideas: do the proposed changes make certain patt…

The wikipedia summary of the JavaScript design rational is decent; it also kind of explains why it's so odd: > In 1995, Netscape Communications recruited Brendan Eich with the goal of embedding the Scheme programming language into its Netscape Navigator.[11] Before he could get started, Netscape Communications collaborated with Sun Microsystems to include in Netscape Navigator Sun's more static programming language J…

Post by pjmlp » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 5:45 PM UTC

charlysl wrote: post #64

rydel wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having lambda doesn’t mean to be FP. One of the core features missing in Java (JavaScript also) is TCO(tail call optimization)

According to the pdf's author, the crucial feature of FP is that there is no visible non-determinism. This means that every time you call a function with the same arguments it is guaranteed that you will get the same result. The other key feature is that there are no visible side-effects when calling a function. Tail recursion of course is great to have, but you can certainly FP without it, even in a language that su…

Post by macintux » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 6:00 PM UTC

lbriner wrote: post #67

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you give some reasons for your statement? Why do you think it's rubbish?

Like many discussions, this seems to demonstrate that a Programmer != a Developer != an Engineer != an Architect. Of course, many programmers would never need this stuff and many have no formal qualifications but they still produce what they need to without problems. They certainly do not need to know about paradigms vs concepts vs models etc. even if it is interesting. Of course, there ARE people who need to know th…

Post by suprfnk » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 6:03 PM UTC

charlysl wrote: post #57

I have read CTM, the author's book. He did in fact dislike the word "paradigm" and prefered "computation model" instead. A model is a set of concepts. A concept is an orthogonal language feature, like closures, concurrency, explicit state (which he now calls named state), exceptions, etc. His approach is not so much that you should select one language that supports a paradigm that seems the most suitable for a given…