The object oriented paradigm: issues and practices

The object-oriented approach to software development has entered a period of explosive growth. The number of programmers using object-oriented programming languages has been growing at double-digit rates for the past two or three years. According to Gapers Jones of Software Productivity Research, object oriented languages ranked second in use by development programmers and fifth in overall use in the United States. Even with all of this growth, thoughtful observers have noticed some gaps. This missing information would be useful in exploring overall economic and technical value of the object-oriented approach. Many software engineering topics are either not covered in the object-oriented literature, or the coverage is so sparse that more data is needed to make a complete and convincing case in favor of object-oriented methods.