Thinking in FP vs OOP for large scale apps => Re: [plt-scheme] Imperative programming : missing the flow

From: Matthias Felleisen (matthias at ccs.neu.edu)
Date: Wed May 16 18:42:37 EDT 2007

On May 16, 2007, at 6:28 PM, Bill Wood wrote:

> On Wed, 2007-05-16 at 17:08 -0400, Matthias Felleisen wrote:
>    . . .
>> The OO concept predates ADTs from what I can tell by several years.
>> When I started reading on ADTs in 1979/80  I think the idea was
>> that they could explain notions such as the 1965/66 OO programming
>> and Hoare's data types etc. The IBM tech rpts I saw are from the
>> very late 60s and early 70s.
>
> The earliest reference I can find to a recognizable OO ancestor is
> Simula 67, and I know Hewitt's Actor model also comes in there at  
> around
> the same time.  What are you thinking of that came about ca. 1965?
>
> I can find references to ADTs, both algebraic and abstract model, from
> around 1973 (Parnas 1972, A Technique for the Specification of  
> Software
> Modules; Zilles 1974, Algebraic Specification of Data Types), but
> nothing earlier.  In [1] data abstractions specified using the  
> abstract
> model approach are recognized as far back as Earley 1971 (Toward an
> Understanding of Data Structure).
>
> Even pushing ADTs back to the early 70s, OO before ADT still seems
> right.
>
> [1] Barbara Liskov and Stephen Zilles, "An Introduction to Formal
> Specifications of Data Abstractions", Chapter 1, Current Trends in
> Programming Methodology, vol. 1, Software Specification and Design,
> Raymond T. Yeh (ed), 1977.

The Simula people started working on OOP in 1965, tried to ship  
Simula67 in 1966, but released in 1967.

The ADJ group (Goguen, Thatcher, Wagner and someone whose name I  
forgot) started working and writing on algebraic data specifications  
around 1970.

-- Matthias



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