History of Object Oriented Programming

[Dudd]

Ugh, I have to write a 3 page paper on the historical significance of Object Oriented Programming for my AP Comp Sci class. Google isn't helping: it either gives me a link to a college's course list, or to some website that goes into way too much detail, incorporating concepts that I have never seen before, usually in a language I have never used (only delved into the surface of C++). So, does anyone know of a site that has a very general overview of the historal significance of OOP, or better yet, give me a few sentence run down of that? Believe me, I can turn a few sentences into 3 pages of BS. And yes, I am asking you to do part of my homework for me, but I'm 3 days away from graduation and quite frankly don't care. Thanks.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Was smalltalk the first OO language? I don't recall if it was the first or if it just did it well. Basically, some problems did not lend themselves well to an imperative approach and OO was developed, packing data and logic together into "objects" to make it more human-like and coherent. Instead of writing a program that passes, say, an apple around (i.e. apple = grow_apple(); apple_sauce = sauce(apple); ) , you would create the apple itself as an object (class apple { color: red; consistency: firm; etc }), and then you can call methods of that object (apple.turnIntoSauce()), or you can inherit it in another class ( class applesauce extends apple { color: yellowish; consistency: soupy; }). So instead of passing data around, you instantiate objects, and then tell those objects to perform actions, as you would in real life, almost.

Ok so that has nothing to do with the history of OOP but it least it perhaps clarifies some things about OOP and adds to your BS reservior 😉

 

[Yomicron]

Simula was the the fist language to use classes and objects. Xerox took this concept and extended it to created the first fully object oriented language, Smalltalk. Before Smalltalk the classes of Simula weren't seen as much more than a vehicle for defining abstract data types. All OO languages have used the Smalltalk approach.

Tidbit: The term 'object-oriented' was created by Alan Kay, the man in charge of designing Smalltalk.

 

[Dudd]

Thanks guys, I actually found something useful on google here. Lots of material to sift through and turn into 3 pages.

 

[Spyro]

Originally posted by: Dudd
Thanks guys, I actually found something useful on google here. Lots of material to sift through and turn into 3 pages.

Hmmm, its nice, but......... There's no mention of python 😛

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: Spyro

Originally posted by: Dudd
Thanks guys, I actually found something useful on google here. Lots of material to sift through and turn into 3 pages.

Hmmm, its nice, but......... There's no mention of python 😛

Mmmm.. Python....

/me vibrates