Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!think!bloom-beacon!gatech!purdue!i.cc.purdue.edu!j.cc.purdue.edu!pur-ee!uiucdcs!uiucdcsp!johnson
From: johnson@uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: oo definition request
Message-ID: <77300010@uiucdcsp>
Date: 17 May 88 20:36:00 GMT
References: <4800021@uiucdcsm>
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Nf-ID: #R:uiucdcsm:4800021:uiucdcsp:77300010:000:431
Nf-From: uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu!johnson    May 17 15:36:00 1988


I consider the three key features of o-o programming to be
data abstraction, late-bound procedure calls (messages) and inheritance.
My definition of data abstraction is less strong than Wegner's since
anything he calls an object I would probably consider a data abstraction,
i.e. it is not necessary to avoid all direct references to the fields of
an object.  Instead, an object is something with a state and a set of
operations.