Lambda the Ultimate

The Platonic Solids of Software Construction and Their Realization in C

Synopsis -

Here I try to contrive 5 (actually ends up being 6) 'Platonic Solids' of software construction - IE, the fundamental elements of programming that all programmers in all business domains end up leveraging regardless of their general purpose programming language.

As a practical matter, I then demonstrate how different aspects of each element are either supportable - or not supportable in C. A language like C is chosen partially because when we use it to encode these elements, its weak language semantics actually enable us to understand each element in a more isolated way. For discussion at this level of analysis, this turns out to be useful.

However, I warn readers that this gist-article is more conjecture than science, an emerging idea that, if accurate in its notions, is a precursor to a rigorous investigation. That is why I offer it up for evaluation and critique here.