Programming Paradigms

Sven Helmer

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Chapter 1

Motivation

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Programming Languages
There are many different programming languages out
there
a couple of hundred, if not thousands. . .
A quick look may reveal the following

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Programming Languages(2)

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Programming Languages(3)

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Programming Languages(4)

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Huge Number of Languages

Why are there so many different languages. . . ?
Gee, I wish there was a programming language that
lets you do XYZ!
As shown on previous slide, some languages are
highly specialized for certain domains
Lets create a language that combines all the neat
features of languages X,Y, and Z!

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Huge Number of Languages(2)

. . . and do we have to look at all of them?
Fortunately not, there are more general underlying
principles and concepts
Programming languages can be categorized
according to programming paradigms
Some of them are shown in the column
Paradigm(s) on one of the previous slides
Once you have understood these general concepts,
it becomes easier to learn new programming
languages

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Paradigms
However, does not mean that by just picking the right
paradigm all problems vanish into thin air

Or put more elegantly:

There does not now, nor will there ever exist, a
programming language in which it is the least bit
hard to write bad programs.
L. Flon
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Paradigms(2)

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Paradigms(3)
In this course we are going to look at the most
important paradigms
We will also highlight strengths and weaknesses of
each paradigm
This will be done in a practical way using concrete
languages:
Learning to program is like learning to swim. No
amount of theory is a substitute for diving into the
pool.
Joe Armstrong

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Paradigms(4)
Keeping to the swimming analogy: there are many
different ways of swimming as well:
breaststroke
backstroke
crawl
butterfly
...
Each of them has certain advantages and
disadvantages

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Brief Overview
Brief recapitulation
Elements of programming languages
Imperative/procedural paradigm
More paradigms and languages
Object-oriented: Ruby
Logic programming: Prolog
Functional: Haskell
Concurrent: Erlang

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Books/Literature
The main book used for this lecture is
Bruce A. Tate: Seven Languages in Seven Weeks,
Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2010
Additional material taken from
Maurizio Gabrielli, Simone Martini: Programming
Languages: Principles and Paradigms, Springer,
2010 (also available in Italian)
Allen B. Tucker, Robert E. Noonan: Programming
Languages Principles and Paradigms (2nd ed.),
McGraw-Hill, 2007

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