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Synchronous programming, also called synchronous reactive programming (SRP), is a computer programming paradigm supported by synchronous programming languages. The principle of SRP is to make the same abstraction for programming languages as the synchronous abstraction in digital circuits. Synchronous circuits are indeed designed at a high level of abstraction where the timing characteristics of the electronic transistors are neglected. Each gate of the circuit (or, and, ...) is therefore assumed to compute its result instantaneously, each wire is assumed to transmit its signal instantaneously. A synchronous circuit is clocked and at each tick of its clock, it computes instantaneously its output values and the new values of its memory cells (latches) from its input values and the current values of its memory cells. In other words, the circuit behaves as if the electrons were flowing infinitely fast. The first synchronous programming languages were invented in France in the 1980s: Esterel, Lustre, and SIGNAL. Since then, many other synchronous languages have emerged.

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