- A software design principle meaning that change of one piece of software does not affect other pieces, or that operations do not have side effects. Orthogonality in a programming language means that a relatively small set of primitive constructs can be combined in a relatively small number of ways to build the control and data structures of the language. It is associated with simplicity; the more orthogonal the design, the fewer exceptions. This makes it easier to learn, read, and write programs in a programming language. The meaning of an orthogonal feature is independent of context; the key parameters are symmetry and consistency (for example, a pointer is an orthogonal concept). ← Wikipedia
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