Mark Janssen writes: > From: en.wikipedia.org: Programming_paradigm: > > "A programming paradigm is a fundamental style of computer > programming. There are four main paradigms: object-oriented, > imperative, functional and declarative. Their foundations are distinct > models of computation: Turing machine for object-oriented and > imperative programming, lambda calculus for functional programming, > and first order logic for logic programming." > > While I understand the interest in purely theoretical models, I wonder > two things: 1) Are these distinct models of computation valid? And, > 2) If so, shouldn't a theory of types announce what model of > computation they are working from?
These distinctions are not fully valid. - Functional programming, logic programming and imperative programming are three different *computational mechanisms*. - Object-orientation and abstract data types are two different ways of building higher-level *abstractions*. The authors of this paragraph did not understand that computational mechanisms and higher-level abstractions are separate, orthogonal dimensions in programming language design. All six combinations, obtained by picking a computational mechanism from the first bullet and an abstraction mechanism from the second bullet, are possible. It is a mistake to put object-orientation in the first bullet. Their idea of "paradigm" is vague and ill-defined. Cheers, Uday Reddy -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
