Saturday, September 30, 2006

Programming Paradigms - don't be popular

Why does OO have a list of critism (and also mention lack of Evidence) but the other programming Paradigms don't on Wikipedia?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming

Surely the 'others' don't have good evidence they make programming faster/better either?

Some examples:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_programming
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_programming
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_programming
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperative_programming
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflective_programming
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_database (ok, not strictly a programming paradigm)
I agree Relational databases are much more popular than OODB and therefore must be better ;-)

I guess some of the reasons are that (a) it's being applied everywhere, even when it's not applicable, (b) no proof of being better, (c) other good reasons.

But mostly, I suspect, it's hated because it's popular.

I expect, in reality, programming efficiency is more "fitting people's minds" than "less lines of code" or "better speed efficiency" (take functional vs. imperative, for instance).

Are Design Patterns (mostly) not needed in "high-level" languages?

Sunday, September 17, 2006

BASIC, kids, programming.

Good article about the inaccessibility of programming as relating to kids:

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2006/09/14/basic/index.html

I’m glad he mentioned Python and Chipmunk basic. Otherwise I was going to dismiss him as a crank.

Some language (say that could be used in the command prompt) would be a better than the current situation on Windows (and let’s not talk about batch files :-D ). At least you've got some programming languages with MacOSX (e.g. Python/Perl from the terminal, Xcode with C/C++/ObjC/Java on CD).

The most powerful invention of the 20th century is the programmable computer and the one that will have the most impact of the 21st century.
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