This article is from the Object-Oriented Technology FAQ, by Bob Hathaway rjh@geodesic.com with numerous contributions by others.
Object-Based Programming usually refers to objects without inheritance
[Cardelli 85] and hence without polymorphism, as in '83 Ada and Modula-2.
These languages support abstract data types (Adts) and not classes, which
provide inheritance and polymorphism. Ada95 and Modula-3; however, support
both inheritance and polymorphism and are object-oriented. [Cardelli 85, p481]
state "that a language is object-oriented if and only if it satisfies the
following requirements:
- It supports objects that are data abstractions with an interface of named
operations and a hidden local state.
- Objects have an associated type.
- Types may inherit attributes from supertypes.
object-oriented = data abstractions + object types + type inheritance
These definitions are also found in [Booch 91, Ch2 and Wegner 87].
[Coad 91] provides another model:
Object-Oriented = Classes and Objects
+ Inheritance
+ Communication with messages
 
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