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"... You need to understand the core language: is it algorithmic, functional, object-oriented? ..." - Effective Java, Joshua Bloch, 2ndEd. 2008. Foreword, p xiii

Functional: Lisp, OO: Java, but what is ( would Bloch mean by ) an algorithmic programming language?

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I assume the author want to speak about imperative programming language. A (quite complete) map of the different programming paradigms and their relationship that a language may support is available here. An important note is that a language may support (more or less well) several paradigms.

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+1 I like imperative better than procedural even though they mean the same thing. It's a good point about a single language supporting more than one style. – Caleb Aug 13 '11 at 6:47
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Interesting map! Thanks. – ndroock1 Aug 13 '11 at 7:30
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Perhaps "procedural" is what's intended. Languages like C and Pascal, in which procedures are the main tool for structuring a program, are often called "procedural programming languages." You can think of a procedure as an implementation of an algorithm, so "algorithmic" would seem like a reasonable synonym for "procedural".

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