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Programming Paradigms

Choosing a programming paradigm is a design decision that shapes how you model state and behavior, how you reason about concurrency, and how you operate software in production. The goal is not to be dogmatic but to be intentional: select a dominant style per component, then mix paradigms at boundaries where it improves clarity or operability. Tie your choice to explicit quality attributes (e.g., latency, throughput, safety, evolvability) and the surrounding system semantics.

At a glance, you can think of paradigms as lenses for structuring computation:

  • Procedural/Structured emphasizes clear control flow and localized mutation—great for I/O orchestration.
  • Object‑Oriented centers on encapsulated domain behavior and stable interfaces.
  • Functional favors pure transforms and immutability for correctness and parallelism.
  • Event‑Driven & Reactive models asynchronous streams, backpressure, and temporal coupling.
  • Declarative & Logic states the “what” (rules, queries) instead of the “how”.
  • Actor Model isolates state behind message boundaries with supervision.

Use the quick decision aid below to pick a default and then refine based on the component’s responsibilities, team expertise, and runtime constraints. Keep the broader architecture in view: connector choices, backpressure, idempotency, and failure modes often matter more than syntax or language features.

A vertical decision aid to select a dominant paradigm per component.

What you’ll take away

  • How to choose a paradigm against constraints (latency, throughput, safety, changeability)
  • Where it fits in your architecture: connectors, backpressure, idempotency, supervision
  • Trade‑offs and review cues to avoid over‑abstraction and accidental complexity

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