Towards a Unified Programming Language

The goal of research in programming languages should be to develop languages that integrates the best of concepts and constructs from the various programming paradigms. We do not argue for a multi-paradigm language, where the programmer alternates between the different paradigms/styles. Instead, we find that the languages of the future should integrate the best available concepts and constructs in such a way that the programmer does not think of multiple paradigms when using a given language. In this paper, we describe to what extent the BETA language has been successful in obtaining a unified style and where more research is needed. In addition to traditional paradigms such as object-oriented-, imperativefunctionaland logic programming, we also discuss concurrent programming and prototype-based programming. We discuss language features such as the BETA pattern construct, virtual procedures and classes, higher order classes, methods and functions, part objects, blockstructure, and class-less objects.