"By contrast, a small typed pattern calculus is able to support all the main programming styles, including functional, imperative, object-oriented and query-based styles..."

I recall Stephen Wolfram advocating this with Mma nearly 20 years ago.

Has anyone here played with the bondi language? What's it like?

The site referenced seems to be down, but here's another page with some more links (including some bondi source): http://www-staff.it.uts.edu.au/~cbj/patterns/