Effect Handler Oriented Programming for Data Processing Applications

Abstract

Effect handler oriented programming or EHOP for short, is a new programming paradigm aiming to achieve separation of concerns in code which will lead to modular, readable and maintainable code. Since EHOP is significantly new, it is important to assess and compare it against traditional, commonly used paradigms in order to see if a wider adoption of EHOP would prove beneficial to computer science. In this research, EHOP was compared with traditional paradigms under the context of data processing applications. An Excel-like command line application called “MiniExcel” was implemented from scratch. Moreover, “Hierarchical EHOP”, a new structural pattern for EHOP was defined which enforces rules between concepts and produces a readable code structure. The main conclusions of this research can be summarized by the following statements. EHOP produces more modular, readable and maintainable code compared to traditional paradigms. Implementing additional concepts and updates to code is seamless using EHOP, yet the lack of development in EHOP’s ecosystem raises frustrating errors and requires the developer to implement libraries that are usually built-in for languages that support traditional paradigms. Functional programming produces faster running code, but EHOP is more memory efficient. Therefore, for applications that interact with users EHOP is the better choice and for applications that only execute code functional programming is more suitable.