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Hub AI
Modular programming AI simulator
(@Modular programming_simulator)
Hub AI
Modular programming AI simulator
(@Modular programming_simulator)
Modular programming
Modular programming is a programming paradigm that emphasizes organizing the functions of a codebase into independent modules – each providing an aspect of a computer program in its entirety without providing other aspects.
A module interface expresses the elements that are provided and required by the module. The elements defined in the interface are detectable by other modules. The implementation contains the working code that corresponds to the elements declared in the interface.
Modular programming differs from but is related to other programming paradigms, including:
Modular programming, in the form of subsystems (particularly for I/O) and software libraries, dates to early software systems, where it was used for code reuse. Modular programming per se, with a goal of modularity, developed in the late 1960s and 1970s, as a larger-scale analog of the concept of structured programming (1960s). The term "modular programming" dates at least to the National Symposium on Modular Programming, organized at the Information and Systems Institute in July 1968 by Larry Constantine; other key concepts were information hiding (1972) and separation of concerns (SoC, 1974).
Modules were not included in the original specification for ALGOL 68 (1968), but were included as extensions in early implementations, ALGOL 68-R (1970) and ALGOL 68C (1970), and later formalized. One of the first languages designed from the start for modular programming was the short-lived Modula (1975), by Niklaus Wirth. Another early modular language was Mesa (1970s), by Xerox PARC, and Wirth drew on Mesa as well as the original Modula in its successor, Modula-2 (1978), which influenced later languages, particularly through its successor, Modula-3 (1980s). Modula's use of dot-qualified names, like M.a to refer to object a from module M, coincides with notation to access a field of a record (and similarly for attributes or methods of objects), and is now widespread, seen in C++, C#, Dart, Go, Java, OCaml, and Python, among others. Modular programming became widespread from the 1980s: the original Pascal language (1970) did not include modules, but later versions, notably UCSD Pascal (1978) and Turbo Pascal (1983) included them in the form of "units", as did the Pascal-influenced Ada (1980). The Extended Pascal ISO 10206:1990 standard kept closer to Modula2 in its modular support. Standard ML (1984) has one of the most complete module systems, including functors (parameterized modules) to map between modules.
In the 1980s and 1990s, modular programming was overshadowed by and often conflated with object-oriented programming, particularly due to the popularity of C++ and Java. For example, the C family of languages had support for objects and classes in C++ (originally C with Classes, 1980) and Objective-C (1983), only supporting modules 30 years or more later. Java (1995) supports modules in the form of packages, though the primary unit of code organization is a class. However, Python (1991) prominently used both modules and objects from the start, using modules as the primary unit of code organization and "packages" as a larger-scale unit; and Perl 5 (1994) includes support for both modules and objects, with a vast array of modules being available from CPAN (1993). OCaml (1996) followed ML by supporting modules and functors.
Modular programming is now widespread, and found in virtually all major languages developed since the 1990s. The relative importance of modules varies between languages, and in class-based object-oriented languages there is still overlap and confusion with classes as a unit of organization and encapsulation, but these are both well-established as distinct concepts.
The term assembly (as in .NET languages like C#, F#, or Visual Basic) or package (as in Dart, Go, or Java) is sometimes used instead of module. In other implementations, these are distinct concepts; in Python a package is a set of modules, while in Java 9 the introduction of the Java Platform Module System, in which a new module concept, involving a set of packages with enhanced access control, was implemented. (These packages are not the same as other sorts of packages in software, such as package manager packages.)
Modular programming
Modular programming is a programming paradigm that emphasizes organizing the functions of a codebase into independent modules – each providing an aspect of a computer program in its entirety without providing other aspects.
A module interface expresses the elements that are provided and required by the module. The elements defined in the interface are detectable by other modules. The implementation contains the working code that corresponds to the elements declared in the interface.
Modular programming differs from but is related to other programming paradigms, including:
Modular programming, in the form of subsystems (particularly for I/O) and software libraries, dates to early software systems, where it was used for code reuse. Modular programming per se, with a goal of modularity, developed in the late 1960s and 1970s, as a larger-scale analog of the concept of structured programming (1960s). The term "modular programming" dates at least to the National Symposium on Modular Programming, organized at the Information and Systems Institute in July 1968 by Larry Constantine; other key concepts were information hiding (1972) and separation of concerns (SoC, 1974).
Modules were not included in the original specification for ALGOL 68 (1968), but were included as extensions in early implementations, ALGOL 68-R (1970) and ALGOL 68C (1970), and later formalized. One of the first languages designed from the start for modular programming was the short-lived Modula (1975), by Niklaus Wirth. Another early modular language was Mesa (1970s), by Xerox PARC, and Wirth drew on Mesa as well as the original Modula in its successor, Modula-2 (1978), which influenced later languages, particularly through its successor, Modula-3 (1980s). Modula's use of dot-qualified names, like M.a to refer to object a from module M, coincides with notation to access a field of a record (and similarly for attributes or methods of objects), and is now widespread, seen in C++, C#, Dart, Go, Java, OCaml, and Python, among others. Modular programming became widespread from the 1980s: the original Pascal language (1970) did not include modules, but later versions, notably UCSD Pascal (1978) and Turbo Pascal (1983) included them in the form of "units", as did the Pascal-influenced Ada (1980). The Extended Pascal ISO 10206:1990 standard kept closer to Modula2 in its modular support. Standard ML (1984) has one of the most complete module systems, including functors (parameterized modules) to map between modules.
In the 1980s and 1990s, modular programming was overshadowed by and often conflated with object-oriented programming, particularly due to the popularity of C++ and Java. For example, the C family of languages had support for objects and classes in C++ (originally C with Classes, 1980) and Objective-C (1983), only supporting modules 30 years or more later. Java (1995) supports modules in the form of packages, though the primary unit of code organization is a class. However, Python (1991) prominently used both modules and objects from the start, using modules as the primary unit of code organization and "packages" as a larger-scale unit; and Perl 5 (1994) includes support for both modules and objects, with a vast array of modules being available from CPAN (1993). OCaml (1996) followed ML by supporting modules and functors.
Modular programming is now widespread, and found in virtually all major languages developed since the 1990s. The relative importance of modules varies between languages, and in class-based object-oriented languages there is still overlap and confusion with classes as a unit of organization and encapsulation, but these are both well-established as distinct concepts.
The term assembly (as in .NET languages like C#, F#, or Visual Basic) or package (as in Dart, Go, or Java) is sometimes used instead of module. In other implementations, these are distinct concepts; in Python a package is a set of modules, while in Java 9 the introduction of the Java Platform Module System, in which a new module concept, involving a set of packages with enhanced access control, was implemented. (These packages are not the same as other sorts of packages in software, such as package manager packages.)