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It's like a competition for which alternative programming paradigm is a hill most worth dying on: functional, concatenative, or object oriented. There seem like

It's like a competition for which alternative programming paradigm is a hill most worth dying on: functional, concatenative, or object oriented. There seem like a few runner-ups: contract based, quantum, APL (not sure what paradigm to call it?), I'd like to think of some others. It's kind of a fun exercise. The majority of programmers seem to prefer procedural.

cmrdporcupine 5y ago
APL & descendants are array/vector (or matrix) languages. Anyways, the majority of programmers like general purpose languages that are popular with other programmers, because that's how you get employed and make money. And what has happened in the last 20 years is that techniques from functional & vector languages have made their way into mainstream languages. Either in the syntax or in their libraries. That's a good thing after the previous decade+ of "object orientation will solve all our problems" dogma. Concatenative approaches remain relatively under-explored though.
dTal 5y ago
They aren't mutually exclusive. If you use numpy, you're using array-oriented, procedural, and object oriented all at once; maybe functional too, depending on your programming style. They should be thought of less as all-consuming "paradigms" and more as useful tools, like regex. Sometimes a tool is so powerful you can do everything with it; that doesn't mean it's a good idea!
agumonkey 5y ago
Personally I think the paradigm is not the right battle. OO is a child of modular programming, with other ingredients but to me the real pain point is aiming at low coupling subsystems to be able to iterate at low cost and navigate unknown problems or adapt to customer/market changes. There's also the middle layer trick (ala middle ground DSLs). But the goal is the same, ability to converge quickly on a proper solution. Something I rarely see talked about (but my radar has a short scope)
infogulch 5y ago
Logic languages
mamcx 5y ago
You miss relational! (That is the hill I'm)
- psd1 5y ago
  I think you need a NOT NULL on hill.verb
mikewarot 5y ago
Then there's the declarative languages like Excel. The wildest one I've seen was one that allowed both Imperative and Declarative programming in a semi-sane, yet mixed manner, it was called Metamine. I have a clone of the source, but I want to get stoical working well before I dig into that one.

cmrdporcupine 5y ago

APL & descendants are array/vector (or matrix) languages. Anyways, the majority of programmers like general purpose languages that are popular with other programmers, because that's how you get employed and make money. And what has happened in the last 20 years is that techniques from functional & vector languages have made their way into mainstream languages. Either in the syntax or in their libraries. That's a good thing after the previous decade+ of "object orientation will solve all our problems" dogma. Concatenative approaches remain relatively under-explored though.

dTal 5y ago

They aren't mutually exclusive. If you use numpy, you're using array-oriented, procedural, and object oriented all at once; maybe functional too, depending on your programming style. They should be thought of less as all-consuming "paradigms" and more as useful tools, like regex. Sometimes a tool is so powerful you can do everything with it; that doesn't mean it's a good idea!

agumonkey 5y ago

Personally I think the paradigm is not the right battle. OO is a child of modular programming, with other ingredients but to me the real pain point is aiming at low coupling subsystems to be able to iterate at low cost and navigate unknown problems or adapt to customer/market changes. There's also the middle layer trick (ala middle ground DSLs). But the goal is the same, ability to converge quickly on a proper solution. Something I rarely see talked about (but my radar has a short scope)

infogulch 5y ago

Logic languages

mamcx 5y ago

You miss relational! (That is the hill I'm)

psd1 5y ago
I think you need a NOT NULL on hill.verb

mikewarot 5y ago

Then there's the declarative languages like Excel. The wildest one I've seen was one that allowed both Imperative and Declarative programming in a semi-sane, yet mixed manner, it was called Metamine. I have a clone of the source, but I want to get stoical working well before I dig into that one.