Alan Kay on the meaning of "object-oriented programming" (2003)

5 days ago

Alan Kay coined the term 'object-oriented programming' around 1967 at Utah, influenced by Sketchpad, Simula, ARPAnet, the Burroughs B5000, and his background in Biology and Mathematics.
OOP's original conception involved objects as biological cells or networked computers communicating via messages, eliminating data in favor of message tokens, and supporting multiple algebras per object (later called polymorphism).
Kay deliberately left out inheritance initially, preferring messaging, local retention and protection of state-process, and extreme late-binding as core principles, distinct from abstract data types (ADT) approaches.
He viewed OOP as achievable in Smalltalk and LISP, emphasizing a non-data-procedure paradigm inspired by ARPAnet's whole-computer units, contrasting with later CS trends favoring ADT and remote procedure calls.

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