Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 May 2010
Foundation concepts: Programming language, Algorithm.
Definition: A programming style that focuses on data objects and the operations performed on them as a whole, rather than concentrating purely on executable code and treating data as something that passively flows through it.
Overview
Object-oriented is one of the most popular bandwagons for computing professionals and organizations to jump upon. In reality it is a simple logical evolution in programming methodologies that has gradually been solidifying since the 1960s. It is certainly a Good Thing, but not necessarily the shiny bright new technology it is usually thought to be.
In the older, non-object-oriented style of programming, programmers concentrate on designing programs and algorithms that will process data. The data is viewed as a passive entity that flows through the program, and is worked on by it. Starting in a small way with Cobol in 1961, and fully taking off with the far more rational Algol-68 in 1968, programming languages provided ways of encapsulating large and complex data items, even whole databases, as single manipulable objects in a program. Programming was still viewed as producing instructions that say what to do with the data, but the data could be handled as a single well-defined object, not as an amorphous collection of binary digits.
These developments gave rise to the idea of Abstract data types (ADTs) as a tool used in the early stages of software development. With ADTs, all of the different kinds of data that a program will have to deal with are fully and formally defined, and an exact specification is provided for all of the valid operations on those data types.
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