X-MaP (Cross-Mapped Programming): Treating the Header Row as a Schema, Rows as Instances, and Columns as Lazy Properties

A Japanese-language version of this article is available on Zenn.

I've prepared a blank map.

Fill in what you need, as your own — and draw the shipping lanes, the pipelines, so that data, the traveler, can reach the right destination.

Introduction

There's an old, well-known technique: put a map in the header row and call into it from the middle of your code by key. This article generalizes that pattern into a full paradigm: the header row is a schema, each row is an instance, each column is a lazy property, and each cell is a polymorphic entity that can hold a value, a function, or a predicate expression. We call this paradigm X-MaP (Cross-Mapped Programming), positioned alongside object-oriented and functional programming as a language-agnostic design paradigm.