Modern programming language research has explored numerous paradigms—from object-oriented to functional programming—yet two powerful approaches with profound theoretical and practical implications remain underexplored: Table-Driven Programming (TDP) and Vector Functional Programming (VFP). These paradigms, which leverage rectangular data structures as their fundamental abstraction, have quietly powered critical systems from embedded devices to high-frequency trading platforms for decades, offering unique insights into program composition and verification.

This talk synthesizes decades of industry experience with our recent research into VFP optimization for data-intensive applications and TDP implementations for resource-constrained microcontrollers. Our findings reveal a fundamental principle: rectangular data structures provide a natural impedance match between human cognitive models and machine execution patterns.