Programming Fundamentals

Programming is composed of the methodologies or activities for creating computer programs that perform a desired function. It is an indispensible part in software construction. In general, programming can be considered as the process of designing, writing, testing, debugging, and maintaining the source code. This source code is written in a programming language.

The process of writing source code often requires expertise in many different subject areas—including knowledge of the application domain, appropriate data structures, specialized algorithms, various language constructs, good programming techniques, and software engineering.

3.2 Programming Paradigms

Programming is highly creative and thus somewhat personal. Different people often write different programs for the same requirements. This diversity of programming causes much difficulty in the construction and maintenance of large complex software. Various programming paradigms have been developed over the years to put some standardization into this highly creative and personal activity. When one programs, he or she can use one of several programming paradigms to write the code. The major types of programming paradigms are discussed below:

• Unstructured Programming: In unstructured programming, a programmer follows his/her hunch to write the code in whatever way he/she likes as long as the function is operational. Often, the practice is to write code to fulfill a specific utility without regard to anything else. Programs written this way exhibit no particular structure—thus the name “unstructured programming.” Unstructured programming is also sometimes called ad hoc programming.

• Structured / Procedural / Imperative Programming: A hallmark of structured programming is the use of well-defined control structures, including procedures (and/or functions) with each procedure (or function) performing a specific task. Interfaces exist between procedures to facilitate correct and smooth calling operations of the programs. Under structured programming, programmers often follow established protocols and rules of thumb when writing code. These protocols and rules can be numerous and cover almost the entire scope of programming—ranging from the simplest issue (such as how to name variables, functions, procedures, and so forth) to more complex issues (such as how to structure an interface, how to handle exceptions, and so forth).

• Object-Oriented Programming: While procedural programming organizes programs around procedures, object-oriented programming (OOP) organize a program around objects, which are abstract data structures that combine both data and methods used to access or manipulate the data. The primary features of OOP are that objects representing various abstract and concrete entities are created and these objects interact with each other to collectively fulfill the desired functions.

• Aspect-Oriented Programming: Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) is a programming paradigm that is built on top of OOP. AOP aims to isolate secondary or supporting functions from the main program’s business logic by focusing on the cross sections (concerns) of the objects. The primary motivation for AOP is to resolve the object tangling and scattering associated with OOP, in which the interactions among objects become very complex. The essence of AOP is the greatly emphasized separation of concerns, which separates noncore functional concerns or logic into various aspects.

• Functional Programming: Though less popular, functional programming is as viable as the other paradigms in solving programming problems. In functional programming, all computations are treated as the evaluation of mathematical functions. In contrast to the imperative programming that emphasizes changes in state, functional programming emphasizes the application of functions, avoids state and mutable data, and provides referential transparency.

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