/ Posted In: Back-End Development Tags: Tags: Functional Programming, Object Orientated PHP, Up and Running Difficulty: Intermediate
When you’re brand new to development in PHP or JavaScript, you don’t really need or want to think too hard about programming paradigms. You just want to get things to work. And that makes a lot of sense. But eventually as you go along, you start to wonder. What’s this “OOP” thing people seem obsessed with? Am I doing that? Should I be?
Fundamentally, this article is for people in a place like that. Our goal today is to clarify what these three major paradigms in software development are, how they relate to each other, and which you’ll want to use when. Contrary to popular belief, there isn’t a “right” or “wrong” answer ever.
Before we start breaking down all the programming paradigms we’ll cover, it makes sense to be clearer about what we mean by “paradigms”. To cite a definition which is relevant, the American Heritage Dictionary says a paradigm is:
A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline
