Scalar programming

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Programming paradigms

Agent-oriented
Automata-based
Component-based
- Flow-based
- Pipelined
Concatenative
Concurrent computing
- Relativistic programming
Data-driven
Declarative (contrast: Imperative)
- Constraint
- Dataflow
  - Cell-oriented (spreadsheets)
  - Reactive
- Functional
- Logic
Event-driven
- Service-oriented
- Time-driven
Expression-oriented
Feature-oriented
Function-level (contrast: Value-level)
Generic
Imperative (contrast: Declarative)
- Procedural
Language-oriented
- Discipline-specific
- Domain-specific
- Grammar-oriented
  - Dialecting
- Intentional
Metaprogramming
- Automatic
- Reflective
  - Attribute-oriented
- Template
  - Policy-based
Non-structured (contrast: Structured)
- Array
Nondeterministic
Parallel computing
- Process-oriented
Programming in the large / small
Semantic
Structured (contrast: Non-structured)
- Modular (contrast: Monolithic)
- Object-oriented
- Recursive
Value-level (contrast: Function-level)

Scalar programming is a term used to refer to those programming approaches that do not follow the array programming paradigm.

The fundamental idea behind scalar programming is that operations apply to a single value at a time. This makes it a low-level programming model as it restricts the programmer to think and operate on the elemental constituents of data aggregates, and resorting to explicit loops of individual scalar operations to process the whole aggregates.