"Defining OO as based on the use of class hierarchies and virtual functions is also practical in that it provides some guidance as to where OO is likely to be successful"
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Stroustrup is doing something characteristically engineer-brained here: smuggling a pragmatic boundary into a debate that loves metaphysics. “Object-oriented” is one of those labels that expands to fill whatever someone wants to sell, defend, or criticize. By tying OO to class hierarchies and virtual functions, he’s not claiming that’s the pure essence of the paradigm; he’s narrowing the term to the features that actually impose costs, demand discipline, and therefore generate meaningful evidence about when the style pays off.
The intent is partly defensive. C++ inherited a thousand arguments about whether OO is “really” about messaging, encapsulation, or modeling the real world. Stroustrup responds like a toolmaker: define it in terms of mechanisms the language can provide and programmers can misuse. Hierarchies and virtual dispatch are not vibes; they’re concrete commitments. They shape performance, binary interfaces, testing strategy, and how easily a codebase can be refactored without breaking callers.
The subtext is a quiet warning against cargo-cult design. If your “OO” doesn’t lean on polymorphism and substitutability, calling it OO is mostly branding. If it does, you’ve entered a domain where success is conditional: it works when you have stable abstractions, clear variation points, and systems that benefit from late binding. It fails when hierarchies become speculative taxonomy, when “is-a” relationships are forced, or when virtual calls become an architectural tax paid everywhere.
Context matters: Stroustrup built C++ in the shadow of Simula and the realities of systems programming. His version of OO was never meant to be theology. It was meant to be a way to manage complexity without lying about the machine.
The intent is partly defensive. C++ inherited a thousand arguments about whether OO is “really” about messaging, encapsulation, or modeling the real world. Stroustrup responds like a toolmaker: define it in terms of mechanisms the language can provide and programmers can misuse. Hierarchies and virtual dispatch are not vibes; they’re concrete commitments. They shape performance, binary interfaces, testing strategy, and how easily a codebase can be refactored without breaking callers.
The subtext is a quiet warning against cargo-cult design. If your “OO” doesn’t lean on polymorphism and substitutability, calling it OO is mostly branding. If it does, you’ve entered a domain where success is conditional: it works when you have stable abstractions, clear variation points, and systems that benefit from late binding. It fails when hierarchies become speculative taxonomy, when “is-a” relationships are forced, or when virtual calls become an architectural tax paid everywhere.
Context matters: Stroustrup built C++ in the shadow of Simula and the realities of systems programming. His version of OO was never meant to be theology. It was meant to be a way to manage complexity without lying about the machine.
Quote Details
| Topic | Coding & Programming |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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