<div dir="ltr">Warning, this is a bit of a rant.<div><br></div><div>That paragraph from Wikipedia seems to be confused. It gives the fourth paradigm as "declarative" but then says "first order logic for logic programming". It seems somebody did an incomplete replacement of "declarative" for "logic". Wikipedia is often schizophrenic like that.<div>
<br></div><div>Personally, I think that object oriented and logical programming only became official paradigms because there was a certain level of hype for them in the 1980s and nobody has thought to strike them off the list after the hype died down.</div>
<div><br></div><div style>Object-oriented, as constituted today, is just a layer of abstraction over imperative programming (or imperative style programming in functional languages, because objects require side-effects). What "object-oriented" language actually in use now isn't just an imperative language with fancy abstraction mechanisms?</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>The problem with having declarative languages as a paradigm (which logical languages would be a part) is that it feels like it should be a "miscellaneous" category. Being declarative doesn't tell you much except that some machine is going to turn your descriptions of something into some kind of action. In logical programming it is a set of predicates, but it could just as easily be almost anything else. In a way all languages are "declarative", it is just that we have some standard interpretations of what is declared that are very common (imperative and functional).</div>
<div style><br></div></div><div style>My wish is that the idea of there being four paradigms would be abandoned the same we the idea of four food groups has been abandoned (which may surprise some of you). We have more than four different modes of thinking when programming and some are much more important than others and some are subsets of others. We should teach students a more sophisticated view.</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>Ironically Wikipedia also shows us this complexity. The programming language paradigm side bar actually reveals the wealth of different styles that are available. There is simply no clean and useful way to overlay the four paradigms over what we see there, so it should be abandoned because it gives students a false idea.</div>
</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 9:42 AM, Andreas Abel <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:andreas.abel@ifi.lmu.de" target="_blank">andreas.abel@ifi.lmu.de</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div class="im">[ The Types Forum, <a href="http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-list" target="_blank">http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/<u></u>mailman/listinfo/types-list</a> ]<br>
<br></div><div class="im">
On 17.04.2013 11:30, Uday S Reddy wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Mark Janssen writes:<br>
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
From: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org" target="_blank">en.wikipedia.org</a>: Programming_paradigm:<br>
<br>
"A programming paradigm is a fundamental style of computer<br>
programming. There are four main paradigms: object-oriented,<br>
imperative, functional and declarative. Their foundations are distinct<br>
models of computation: Turing machine for object-oriented and<br>
imperative programming, lambda calculus for functional programming,<br>
and first order logic for logic programming."<br>
</blockquote></blockquote>
<br></div>
I removed the second sentence relating paradigms to computation models<br>
and put it on the talk page instead. It does not make sense to connect imperative programming to Turing machines like functional programming to lambda calculus. A better match would be random access machines, but the whole idea of a connection between a programming paradigm and a computation model is misleading.<div class="HOEnZb">
<div class="h5"><br>
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
While I understand the interest in purely theoretical models, I wonder<br>
two things: 1) Are these distinct models of computation valid? And,<br>
2) If so, shouldn't a theory of types announce what model of<br>
computation they are working from?<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
These distinctions are not fully valid.<br>
<br>
- Functional programming, logic programming and imperative programming are<br>
three different *computational mechanisms*.<br>
<br>
- Object-orientation and abstract data types are two different ways of<br>
building higher-level *abstractions*.<br>
<br>
The authors of this paragraph did not understand that computational<br>
mechanisms and higher-level abstractions are separate, orthogonal dimensions<br>
in programming language design. All six combinations, obtained by picking a<br>
computational mechanism from the first bullet and an abstraction mechanism<br>
from the second bullet, are possible. It is a mistake to put<br>
object-orientation in the first bullet. Their idea of "paradigm" is vague<br>
and ill-defined.<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br>
Uday Reddy<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
<br></div></div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
-- <br>
Andreas Abel <>< Du bist der geliebte Mensch.<br>
<br>
Theoretical Computer Science, University of Munich<br>
Oettingenstr. 67, D-80538 Munich, GERMANY<br>
<br>
<a href="mailto:andreas.abel@ifi.lmu.de" target="_blank">andreas.abel@ifi.lmu.de</a><br>
<a href="http://www2.tcs.ifi.lmu.de/~abel/" target="_blank">http://www2.tcs.ifi.lmu.de/~<u></u>abel/</a><br>
</font></span></blockquote></div><br></div>