Programming Paradigms

Last updated Sep 20, 2023 Edit

A paradigm is simply the way you look at and make sense of the world
So a programming paradigm is a way of thinking about and expressing a computer program.
There are quite a few paradigms and some are related
- Imperative: structured, procedural and object-oriented are examples
  - As a general rule, imperative languages explain how to do something step by step
- Declarative: functional database (SQL) and mark-up languages (HTML)
  - As a rule, declarative languages describe the problem and the system knows how to deal with it

Code that is imperative
- That is, it defines a series of steps that must be performed to complete a task
Structured programming is a subset of imperative programming.
Structured programming sees the world as a sequence of tasks that can be broken down into small, easy to manage chunks
- These chunks can be reused

A structure chart shows us the calling structure of a program
- Which subroutines get called from where and what information is passed and returned.

*By Pluke - Own work based on: Structured Chart Example.jpg by ‍Sandia National Laboratories, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16283788 *

Pseudo means not genuine
Pseudo code allows you to think like a programmer while not needing to worry about the syntax of any given programming language

FSMs allow you to plan the states for a control system and what causes the transition from one state to another and any output.
A Mealy machine’s outputs are determined by it’s state and input: you label the output on the transition.
A Moore machine’s outputs are determined only by the current state: the output is labelled in the state.

Comments should enhance the readers understanding of the code
You can assume the reader can already understand code in the language it is written in.
Avoid in line comments where possible
Be consistent in terms of comment use
Comments are especially useful for:
- Module headers
- Subroutine headers
- Explaining the logic behind changes
- Logging code changes

Code that is imperative
Object oriented programming is a subset of imperative programming
It sees the world as a collection of objects or things
- You define a generalised example of a thing which includes all the programs and data that it needs to function

📚 Seth MB