Concept-oriented programming: from classes to concepts and from inheritance to inclusion

TL;DR

This paper introduces concept-oriented programming (COP), a new paradigm that extends traditional object-oriented programming by replacing classes with concepts and inheritance with inclusion, aiming to better model complex systems.

Contribution

The paper proposes a novel programming approach called concept-oriented programming that generalizes classes and inheritance through concepts and inclusion.

Findings

COP provides a more flexible modeling framework.

It simplifies complex system representations.

Preliminary results show improved modularity.

Abstract

For the past several decades, programmers have been modeling things in the world with trees using hierarchies of classes and object-oriented programming (OOP) languages. In this paper, we describe a novel approach to programming, called concept-oriented programming (COP), which generalizes classes and inheritance by introducing concepts and inclusion, respectively.