Dr. Alan Kay on the meaning of "object-oriented programming"

10 hours ago

Alan Kay coined the term 'object-oriented programming' around 1967, inspired by biological cells, computers on a network, and ideas from Sketchpad, Simula, and the ARPAnet.
Kay's original conception emphasized messaging from the start, eliminating data by treating it as just another message token, and allowing objects to have multiple algebras (genericity), while initially omitting inheritance.
He defines OOP as 'messaging, local retention and protection and hiding of state-process, and extreme late-binding of all things,' contrasting it with abstract data types and the data-procedure paradigm that became more popular.
Kay notes that Simula catalyzed two paths: his bio/net non-data-procedure route and the abstract data types approach, with the latter gaining more traction in computer science.
The takeaway is that Kay's vision centers on message-passing between autonomous entities, not on inheritance or encapsulation as ends in themselves, which he sees as limiting compared to the original cell-like model.

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