📖The value of values

We use Place-Oriented Programming (PLOP): we know location of data in memory or database and use that to update it.

• This paradigm comes from the times we had really limited RAM and we had no other way to program. This was the only way to do programming.

• Since that times, the capacity grew million times bigger.

• When a thing grows a million times bigger, almost none of its characteristics remain. But we are still clinging to the Place-Oriented Programming.

If we look at memory and records before computers, we see that they do not work by rewriting information.

• Memory does not work by replacing the old information.

• Records are usually append-only. If you make a mistake, you add a corrective entry (e.g., you don’t alter old records in double-entry accounting)

Values are immutable

Value Propositions

• values can be shared (because they are immutable, this is safe to do)

• reproducible results

• easy to fabricate (in the sense of meta-programming. you can produce the strings, lists and maps in every language. i.e., generate)

• language-independent

  • generic

• values aggregate values