A Paradigm, Please — and Heavy on the Culture

Abstract

What contributes to the identification of a paradigm? Advances in technique or reasoning are the usual claims, but marketing and programming culture are two under-explored ingredients. What is ‘sold’ as revolutionary is often the packaging of ideas that have been pre figured in practice; the arrival of the ‘new’ paradigm signals recognition, not revolution. This chapter begins to discuss these neglected notions. It will analyse some of the mechanisms (e.g. choice of particular examples, disparagement of alternatives, claims to ‘naturalness’) by which the market image of so-called new paradigms is heightened in order to attract adherents. It will observe that discussions about programming languages are often not just about notations, but about how they should be used. The character of a programming culture is not just the definition of its tools, but the received wisdom of its adherents. Evidence and examples will be drawn from a variety of investigations of expert programmer behaviour and from the literature. This is not a call to resist this state of affairs, but to accept that a paradigm may be both more and less than what is presented.