The emergence of object-oriented technology: the role of community

  • Authors:
  • Hugh Robinson;Helen Sharp

  • Affiliations:
  • Maths and Computing Faculty, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK;Maths and Computing Faculty, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

  • Venue:
  • Behaviour & Information Technology
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

On the basis of an analysis of contemporaneous materials, we present a history of object-oriented technology from the late 1970s, when object orientation was little known, until the early 1990s, when object-oriented technology was widely accepted across computer science. We identify three phases of emergence: interpretative flexibility; community and dissemination; and pervasiveness. We describe the role of various communities, constituencies, fora and programming languages, and show how the intellectual history of an idea underpinning a technology differs from that technology's path of adoption.