I've put a copy of a paper by Marian Petre on the Software Carpentry web site at: http://www.software-carpentry.com/extern/petre_paradigms.html I hope it will be of interest to people on this list. From the introduction: ...language designers everywhere aspire to a Kuhnian ideal that paradigms are absolute: complete and exclusive, dominating and defining every aspect of an approach... This paper presents an alternative view of programming paradigms based on studies of expert programmer behaviour: a view of paradigms as selectable reference models...that evolve from expert practice and are shaped within a programming culture. From that vantage, it considers the implications of programming paradigms for teaching programming. The author is with the Open University in the United Kingdom; her email is in the paper, and she would be grateful if you could let her know if you cite or reference the paper. Greg