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From: wildbill@ucbvax.ARPA (William J. Laubenheimer)
Newsgroups: net.lang,net.lang.st80
Subject: Definition of Buzzwords: "Object-Oriented"
Message-ID: <4288@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 21-Jan-85 17:00:05 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.4288
Posted: Mon Jan 21 17:00:05 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 22-Jan-85 06:19:26 EST
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Organization: University of California at Berkeley
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Xref: watmath net.lang:1280 net.lang.st80:152

I have recently been involved in some discussions in which the topic
of so-called "object-oriented" languages and programming techniques
has been explored. Despite the fact that "everybody knows" that
Smalltalk-80 is "object-oriented" and "everybody knows" (or pretends
that they do) what "object-oriented programming" is, this same
group of "everybody"s is having a hard time coming up with a rigorous
definition of those terms which goes beyond one of the two following:

1) The term is self-explanatory: the orientation of the language/program
   is towards the "object". This causes the discussion to move in
   the direction of defining an "object", and how exactly the language
   or program is oriented in that direction.

2) The term is defined by example: if somebody says a language is "object-
   oriented" and most people agree, then the language is object-oriented
   (the "science fiction" definition approach - "science fiction" is what
   "science fiction authors" write, "science fiction editors" buy, and
   "science fiction fans" read).

Neither of these approaches makes anybody particularly happy. Nobody's
been able to find an accepted definition in the literature, either.
So, the question is:

Is there a definition of the term "object-oriented" which is both descriptive
of all current uses of that term and accepted by all who currently use it?
If not, can such a definition be constructed?

I would be interested in hearing from anybody who has any ideas relating
to this topic.

                                        Bill Laubenheimer
----------------------------------------UC-Berkeley Computer Science
     ...Killjoy went that-a-way--->     ucbvax!wildbill