[author : Jonathan Erickson]

Extract : «  If there's any lingering impression of the past year — and that is reflected in this collection of DDJ articles — it is that in 1989 object-oriented programming stormed to the forefront in the world of programming. This isn't to say that 1989 ended with hundreds, or even dozens for that matter, of new applications built around and upon the object-oriented paradigm. Instead, this year saw the emergence of object-oriented development tools that will lay the foundation of software for years to come. And as you turn the pages of this volume, you'll see that DDJ established itself as the leader in providing information about this emerging technology with in-depth articles on every major object-oriented environment — from C++ and Object Pascal, to Smalltalk and Eiffel.

This isn't to say that the object-oriented approach is the be-all and end-all of programming in the future. Scott Guthery doesn't think so as you’ll see in his highly controversial December article entitled "Are the Emperor's New Clothes Object Oriented?" Nor were object-oriented systems the only approaches gaining momentum this year, as Ronald Fischer's article on functional programming (also in December) makes evident. Programming is an evolutionary process and approaches to it come and go as new tools and new algorithms find their way into the hands of software developers. [...]  »