From Procedures, Objects, Actors, Components, Services, to Agents -- A Comparative Analysis of the History and Evolution of Programming Abstractions

TL;DR

This paper provides a retrospective analysis of the evolution of programming abstractions, highlighting the progression from procedures to agents and identifying key themes like flexibility, abstraction, modularity, autonomy, and coordination.

Contribution

It offers a comparative historical perspective on programming abstractions, emphasizing common objectives and the driving forces behind their evolution.

Findings

Programming abstractions have evolved towards higher flexibility and abstraction levels.

Concepts like components, services, and agents share goals of modularity and reconfigurability.

Multi-agent systems introduce autonomy and coordination through auto-organization and knowledge.

Abstract

The objective of this chapter is to propose some retrospective analysis of the evolution of programming abstractions, from {\em procedures}, {\em objects}, {\em actors}, {\em components}, {\em services}, up to {\em agents}, %have some compare concepts of software component and of agent (and multi-agent system), %The method chosen is to by replacing them within a general historical perspective. Some common referential with three axes/dimensions is chosen: {\em action selection} at the level of one entity, {\em coupling flexibility} between entities, and {\em abstraction level}. We indeed may observe some continuous quest for higher flexibility (through notions such as {\em late binding}, or {\em reification} of {\em connections}) and higher level of {\em abstraction}. Concepts of components, services and agents have some common objectives (notably, {\em software modularity and reconfigurability}), with multi-agent systems raising further concepts of {\em autonomy} and {\em coordination}. notably through the notion of {\em auto-organization} and the use of {\em knowledge}. We hope that this analysis helps at highlighting some of the basic forces motivating the progress of programming abstractions and therefore that it may provide some seeds for the reflection about future programming abstractions.