Programming

This is the original application of object-orientation.

Object-orientation as a concept is generally said to originate from the development of the programming language Simula-67 in Norway in the late 1960s.

The next step was the development of the Smalltalk language and programming environment at Xerox PARC research laboratories in California in the 1970s.

In the 1980s, Bjarne Stostrup at AT&T, extended the C programming language with a number of constructs to enable object-oriented programming. This language was called C++.

Object-oriented programming languages can be divided into two main categories:

Pure OO languages, which exclusively build on objects and classes for structuring programs. Traditional functions and data structures are not available. Example: Smalltalk, Eiffel.
Hybrid OO languages, which allow traditional, procedural programming, as well as using classes and objects. Examples: C++, Simula, Ada-95.