This is not a deliberately reductive take, I just can't think of any other meaning.
This is not a deliberately reductive take, I just can't think of any other meaning.
It feels secret, because no one really talks directly about how all programming paradigms are about state. But once you realize it, you can start to see how a lot of high-level programmers reference it when they talk, all the time. Just something that "everybody knows", once you spend enough time working in code.
Personally, it wasn't the realization that it's all about state that was particularly exciting. It was using that new interpretation to understand how I could mix and match different types within a single project, to make each separable/modular piece of it, rather than dogmatically sticking to a single paradigm throughout. I think there's a definite mental breakthrough when a programmer can confidently use multiple different state paradigms to handle what would otherwise be a clunky or unwieldy implementation in a single paradigm.
It wasn't a large leap conceptually, but the mental model change came from a long lost hacker news comment along similar lines.
I don't think it is a reductive take. The second instance of the term here instead involves the more traditional concept
program: "a regular plan of action in any undertaking" https://www.dictionary.net/program
Programming (in the sense of software construction) paradigms, philosophies, indeed "languages" etc., are about regularizing plans of action for complex computational undertakings.. usually.