Scalar programming is a term used to refer to those programming approaches that do not follow the array programming paradigm.

The fundamental idea behind scalar programming is that operations apply to a single value at a time. This makes it a low-level programming model as it restricts the programmer to think and operate on the elemental constituents of data aggregates, and resorting to explicit loops of individual scalar operations to process the whole aggregates.

See also

• Array programming (contrast)
• Programming paradigms