[plt-scheme] Re: One eyed man leads blind

From: Stephen Bloch (sbloch at adelphi.edu)
Date: Sat Dec 12 11:41:08 EST 2009

On Dec 12, 2009, at 6:29 AM, Benjamin L.Russell quoted me:

>> In particular, van Roy and Haridi don't believe there is such a thing as a "programming paradigm", only features that various languages provide or don't (an opinion that people on this list have also expressed)....

I stand corrected: I was writing an oversimplified summary from memory, having not actually read very much of the book myself.  Serves me right :-)

Van Roy and Haridi do recognize programming paradigms, indeed dozens of them, enough to define the notion into near-meaninglessness.  They, like Shriram, seem to find it more interesting/useful to ask what combination of concepts and features a particular language provides, rather than trying to fit each language (or each program; which as Shriram points out isn't quite the same question) into one of (say) four paradigms.

Steve Bloch

Posted on the users mailing list.