Towards Multi-Paradigm Software Development

Abstract

Multi-paradigm software development is a possible answer to attempts of finding the best paradigm. It was present in software development at the level of intuition and practiced as the “implementation detail” without a real support in design. Recently it is making a twofold breakthrough: several recent programming paradigms are encouraging it, while explicit multi-paradigm approaches aim at its full-scale support. In order to demonstrate this, a survey of selected recent software development (programming) paradigms (aspect-oriented approaches and generative programming) and multiparadigm approaches (multi-paradigm programming in Leda, multi-paradigm design in C++, and intentional programming) is presented. The survey is preceded and underpinned by the analysis of the concept of paradigm in computer science in the context of software development, since there is no common agreement about the meaning of this term, despite its wide use. The analysis has showed that there are two meanings of paradigm: large-scale and small-scale.