Source of object orientation

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I've been working with Object Orientation for 4 years, but until now I have not asked myself the origin of this paradigm. What I'm trying to understand, basically, is what were the motivations for creating this paradigm, that is, what was intended to be achieved with it.

Researching a little, I read that Alan Kay thought of the paradigm by making an analogy with biology:

  

He launched the postulate that the ideal computer should function as a living organism, that is, each "cell" would behave in relation to other cells in order to achieve an objective, however, functioning autonomously . Cells could also regroup to solve other problems or perform other functions, exchanging "chemical" messages between them.

On the other hand, books always say that the idea of object orientation is to make programming look more like the way of thinking about the real world (which I disagree with a bit, because we build abstractions rather than reliable copies of what we have in the real world). Others say that object-oriented was designed to allow reuse of code and modularity.

This all makes the orientation's origin nebulous. What is really the origin of object orientation? What were the motivations for the paradigm to be created and how does the paradigm solve the problems that motivated it?

When asking what the origin of object orientation is and what the motivations were, I am explicitly asking about the historical facts associated with object orientation rather than the personal motivations of the developers to use the paradigm.

    
asked by anonymous 14.03.2015 / 02:23

1 answer

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According to the above comments, when it comes to "What origin?", "Who invented it?", "Where did it come from?", there is always heated controversy and discussion.

Depending on the point of view, the source of "object orientation" can be greatly debated. This answer is based on the questions that call for a focus on the historical facts, the resolution and abstraction of a given problem, and the benefits of this paradigm in programming.

Alan Kay (one of the creators of the Smalltalk object-oriented language) created Smalltalk by analogy with biology:

  

"I thought of objects being like biological cells and / or   individual computers on a network, it is only able to communicate through   of messages "

However, in addition to this approach, Alan Kay and cia also used and extended the object and class (created by Kristen Nygaard and Ole-Johan Dahl ) This is where the story begins.

Like all major evolutions, object-oriented programming has also had its "origin" related to military issues / wars. Kristen Nygaard was summoned to design her country's first nuclear reactor (Norway). In 1961 he started designing a simulation language (Simula), during the project, Nygaard joins the " specialist programmer " Ole-Johan Dahl >. Simula is designed to be a process description language as well as a programming language.

The natural evolution of the paradigm came with needs. In one of the simulations working on ship blasts, Nygaard and Dahl realized that they could group ships into different categories. Each type of ship would have its own class and class would generate its unique data and behavior.

Ole-Johan Dahl (Feitos / Honras):

  • Most important computer scientist in Norway;
  • In partnership with Kristen Nygaard, she introduced early ideas for object-oriented programming;
  • Norwegian Royal Order of St. Olav (2000) - Awarded for differentiated services for Norway and humanity;

Kristen Nygaard / Ole-Johan Dahl (Feitos / Honras):

  • ACM Turing Award (2001) - For ideas fundamental to the emergence of object-oriented programming, through the design of the programming languages Simula I and Simula 67;
  • IEEE von Neumann Medal (2002) (Along with Kristen Nygaard) - For outstanding achievements in computer science and technology;
  

This is just a point of view, not by far the goal of   accurately answer the source of object orientation.


Sources:
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15.03.2015 / 22:57