Concept-Oriented Programming: References, Classes and Inheritance Revisited

TL;DR

Concept-Oriented Programming (COP) introduces a unified model emphasizing references and concepts, generalizing object-oriented notions like class and inheritance, and integrating various paradigms while maintaining backward compatibility.

Contribution

The paper revisits COP by formalizing references, classes, inheritance, and the new concept of inclusion, offering a unified framework for multiple programming paradigms.

Findings

COP generalizes object hierarchies and cross-cutting concerns

It models various paradigms like functional and aspect-oriented programming

COP remains backward compatible with traditional OOP

Abstract

The main goal of concept-oriented programming (COP) is describing how objects are represented and accessed. It makes references (object locations) first-class elements of the program responsible for many important functions which are difficult to model via objects. COP rethinks and generalizes such primary notions of object-orientation as class and inheritance by introducing a novel construct, concept, and a new relation, inclusion. An advantage is that using only a few basic notions we are able to describe many general patterns of thoughts currently belonging to different programming paradigms: modeling object hierarchies (prototype-based program-ming), precedence of parent methods over child methods (inner methods in Beta), modularizing cross-cutting con-cerns (aspect-oriented programming), value-orientation (functional programming). Since COP remains backward compatible with object-oriented programming, it can be viewed as a perspective direction for developing a simple and natural unified programming model.