Software Design and Development

Historical Reasons

The development of paradigms has come about for a number of reasons

A need for greater productivity – Productivity is the amount of output produced. The more productive a programmer is, the more code is produced. With respect to the development of different paradigms, programmers wanted more output produced in less time. They wanted the amount of code that had to be written reduced whilst still performing the same tasks just as efficiently.

Recognition of repetitive standard programming tasks – Many tasks which have to be solved involve similar solutions or strategies. Many programming languages have library routines (predefined functions and procedures) that can be used.

A desire to solve different types of problems – Computers originally were designed to solve mathematical problems. Different problems arose that also needed to be solved. No two problems are the same. Some problems have no definite answer or a variety of answers. Some problems can be solved but not by using mathematical procedures, and different paradigms were developed to help solve these problems.

The recognition of a range of different basic building blocks – The way a problem is looked at determines how it can be solved and how the solution will be constructed. If programmers look at how a problem is to be solved then they will use control structures and variables. If programmers look at what has to be solved then they may use objects, rules or facts.

Emerging technologies – As computers have developed, the need for different paradigms has increased. The first programmers coded in machine code. The increase in specialisation of computer hardware has made it necessary for programming languages to be less machine-dependent and the emphasis to be on what needs to be solved rather than how. With dual processors becoming common, languages which take advantage of the parallel paradigm will become more widely used.