What is “Orthogonality”?

Question

What does \"orthogonality\" mean when talking about programming languages?

What are some examples of Orthogonality?

Answer 1

Orthogonality means the degree to which language consists of a set of independent primitive constructs that can be combined as necessary to express a program. Features are orthogonal if there are no restrictions on how they may be combined

Example : non-orthogonality

PASCAL: functions can't return structured types. Functional Languages are highly orthogonal.