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Function-level Languages
In computer science, function-level programming refers to one of the two contrasting programming paradigms identified by John Backus in his work on programs as mathematical objects, the other being value-level programming. In his 1977 Turing Award lecture, Backus set forth what he considered to be the need to switch to a different philosophy in programming language design: Programming languages appear to be in trouble. Each successive language incorporates, with a little cleaning up, all the features of its predecessors plus a few more. [...] Each new language claims new and fashionable features... but the plain fact is that few languages make programming sufficiently cheaper or more reliable to justify the cost of producing and learning to use them. He designed FP (programming language), FP to be the first programming language to specifically support the function-level programming style. A ''function-level'' program is variable-free (cf. point-free programming, ''point-free'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Programming Paradigm
A programming paradigm is a relatively high-level way to conceptualize and structure the implementation of a computer program. A programming language can be classified as supporting one or more paradigms. Paradigms are separated along and described by different dimensions of programming. Some paradigms are about implications of the execution model, such as allowing Side effect (computer science), side effects, or whether the sequence of operations is defined by the execution model. Other paradigms are about the way code is organized, such as grouping into units that include both state and behavior. Yet others are about Syntax (programming languages), syntax and Formal grammar, grammar. Some common programming paradigms include (shown in hierarchical relationship): * imperative programming, Imperative code directly controls Control flow, execution flow and state change, explicit statements that change a program state ** procedural programming, procedural organized as function (c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Module (mathematics)
In mathematics, a module is a generalization of the notion of vector space in which the field of scalars is replaced by a (not necessarily commutative) ring. The concept of a ''module'' also generalizes the notion of an abelian group, since the abelian groups are exactly the modules over the ring of integers. Like a vector space, a module is an additive abelian group, and scalar multiplication is distributive over the operations of addition between elements of the ring or module and is compatible with the ring multiplication. Modules are very closely related to the representation theory of groups. They are also one of the central notions of commutative algebra and homological algebra, and are used widely in algebraic geometry and algebraic topology. Introduction and definition Motivation In a vector space, the set of scalars is a field and acts on the vectors by scalar multiplication, subject to certain axioms such as the distributive law. In a module, the scal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Imperative Programming
In computer science, imperative programming is a programming paradigm of software that uses Statement (computer science), statements that change a program's state (computer science), state. In much the same way that the imperative mood in natural languages expresses commands, an imperative program consists of command (computing), commands for the computer to perform. Imperative programming focuses on describing ''how'' a program operates step by step (with general order of the steps being determined in source code by the placement of statements one below the other), rather than on high-level descriptions of its expected results. The term is often used in contrast to declarative programming, which focuses on ''what'' the program should accomplish without specifying all the details of ''how'' the program should achieve the result. Procedural programming Procedural programming is a type of imperative programming in which the program is built from one or more procedures (also termed s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Value-level Programming
Value-level programming refers to one of the two contrasting programming paradigms identified by John Backus in his work on programs as mathematical objects, the other being function-level programming. Backus originally used the term object-level programming but that term is now prone to confusion with object-oriented programming. Value-level programs are those that describe how to combine various ''values'' (i.e., numbers, symbols, strings, etc.) to form other values until the final ''result values'' are obtained. New values are constructed from existing ones by the application of various value-to-value functions, such as addition, concatenation, matrix inversion, and so on. Conventional, von Neumann programs are value-level: expressions on the right side of assignment statements are exclusively concerned with building a value that is then to be stored. Connection with Data Types The value-level approach to programming invites the study of the space of values under the value-f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tacit Programming
Tacit programming, also called point-free style, is a programming paradigm in which function definitions do not identify the arguments (or "points") on which they operate. Instead the definitions merely compose other functions, among which are combinators that manipulate the arguments. Tacit programming is of theoretical interest, because the strict use of composition results in programs that are well adapted for equational reasoning.Manuel Alcino Pereira da Cunha (2005Point-free Program Calculation/ref> It is also the natural style of certain programming languages, including APL and its derivatives, and concatenative languages such as Forth. The lack of argument naming gives point-free style a reputation of being unnecessarily obscure, hence the epithet "pointless style". Unix scripting uses the paradigm with pipes. Examples Python Tacit programming can be illustrated with the following Python code. A sequence of operations such as the following: def example(x): ret ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Declarative Programming
In computer science, declarative programming is a programming paradigm—a style of building the structure and elements of computer programs—that expresses the logic of a computation without describing its control flow. Many languages that apply this style attempt to minimize or eliminate side effects by describing ''what'' the program must accomplish in terms of the problem domain, rather than describing ''how'' to accomplish it as a sequence of the programming language primitives (the ''how'' being left up to the language's implementation). This is in contrast with imperative programming, which implements algorithms in explicit steps. Declarative programming often considers programs as theories of a formal logic, and computations as deductions in that logic space. Declarative programming may greatly simplify writing parallel programs. Common declarative languages include those of database query languages (e.g., SQL, XQuery), regular expressions, logic programming ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Functional Programming
In computer science, functional programming is a programming paradigm where programs are constructed by Function application, applying and Function composition (computer science), composing Function (computer science), functions. It is a declarative programming paradigm in which function definitions are Tree (data structure), trees of Expression (computer science), expressions that map Value (computer science), values to other values, rather than a sequence of Imperative programming, imperative Statement (computer science), statements which update the State (computer science), running state of the program. In functional programming, functions are treated as first-class citizens, meaning that they can be bound to names (including local Identifier (computer languages), identifiers), passed as Parameter (computer programming), arguments, and Return value, returned from other functions, just as any other data type can. This allows programs to be written in a Declarative programming, d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Concatenative Programming Language
A concatenative programming language is a point-free computer programming language in which all expressions denote functions, and the juxtaposition of expressions denotes function composition. Concatenative programming replaces function application, which is common in other programming styles, with function composition as the default way to build subroutines. Example For example, a nesting of operations in an applicative language like the following: baz(bar(foo(x))) ...is written in a concatenative language as a sequence of functions: x foo bar baz Functions and procedures written in concatenative style are not value level, i.e. they typically do not represent the data structures they operate on with explicit names or identifiers. Instead they are function levela function is defined as a pipeline, or a sequence of operations that take parameters from an implicit data structure upon which all functions operate, and return the function results to that shared structure so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
J (programming Language)
The J programming language, developed in the early 1990s by Kenneth E. Iverson and Roger Hui, is an array programming language based primarily on APL (also by Iverson). To avoid repeating the APL special-character problem, J uses only the basic ASCII character set, resorting to the use of the dot and colon as ''inflections'' to form short words similar to '' digraphs''. Most such ''primary'' (or ''primitive'') J words serve as mathematical symbols, with the dot or colon extending the meaning of the basic characters available. Also, many characters which in other languages often must be paired (such as [] "" `` or ) are treated by J as stand-alone words or, when inflected, as single-character roots of multi-character words. J is a very terse array programming language, and is most suited to mathematical and statistical programming, especially when performing operations on matrices. It has also been used in extreme programming and network performance analysis. Like John B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
FL (programming Language)
FL (short for "Function Level") is a programming language created at the IBM Almaden Research Center by John Backus, John Williams, and Edward Wimmers in the 1980s and documented in a report from 1989. FL was designed as a successor of Backus's earlier FP (programming language), FP language, providing specific support for what Backus termed function-level programming. FL is a dynamically typed strict functional programming language with throw and catch exception semantics much like in ML (programming language), ML. Each function has an implicit history argument which is used for doing things like strictly functional input/output (I/O), but is also used for linking to C (programming language), C code. For doing optimization, there exists a type-system which is an extension of Hindley–Milner type inference. Uses PLaSM is a "geometry-oriented extension of a subset of the FL language" first described in 1992. References External links FL Language Manual, Parts 1 and 2(PDF) List ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cartesian-closed Category
In category theory, a category is Cartesian closed if, roughly speaking, any morphism defined on a product of two objects can be naturally identified with a morphism defined on one of the factors. These categories are particularly important in mathematical logic and the theory of programming, in that their internal language is the simply typed lambda calculus. They are generalized by closed monoidal categories, whose internal language, linear type systems, are suitable for both quantum and classical computation. Etymology Named after René Descartes (1596–1650), French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist, whose formulation of analytic geometry gave rise to the concept of Cartesian product, which was later generalized to the notion of categorical product. Definition The category C is called Cartesian closed iff it satisfies the following three properties: * It has a terminal object. * Any two objects ''X'' and ''Y'' of C have a product ''X'' ×''Y'' in C. * Any ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
