Encapsulation and Inheritance in Object-Oriented Programming Languages.

Snyder, A. (1986). Encapsulation and Inheritance in Object-Oriented Programming Languages. OOPSLA '86 Proceedings, 21(11), 38-45.

Type

Conference paper

Intellectual base

Primary research

Year

1986

DOI

10.1145/28697.28702

Link

https://doi.org/10.1145/28697.28702

Cited from

computer_science

Cited by

2 citations across 2 artifacts.

Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.

Primes

• Inheritance
  • A parent and a derivative. Two entities, one prior and one derived from it — superclass and subclass, ancestor and descendant, decedent and heir, species and subspecies. A directed lineage relation. An asymmetric "derives from" relation linking derivative to parent; it is distinct from copying (the parent persists) and from composition (parts independently chosen). Default carrying-over. By default the parent's structure, behaviour, or claims apply to the derivative without re-derivation — methods, alleles, estate, binding precedent transmitted for free. Selective override and extension. The derivative may specialise, override, or augment portions of what it received while remaining recognisably "of the parent" along the un-overridden portions; this override is what makes inheritance generative rather than mere copying. The substitutability invariant. Frequently the derivative can stand wherever the parent was expected (Liskov substitution, a subspecies counting as the species, a junior court speaking with its lineage's authority), constraining which overrides are admissible. The downward-coupling liability. Because children depend on inherited facts, a change to the parent can propagate to — and break — every derivative (the fragile-base-class problem, gene-network constraint, stare-decisis caution).

    This sourceIdentifies the tension between inheritance and encapsulation underlying the fragile-base-class problem.

Domain-specific

• Object-Oriented Programming
  • Alan Kay's history of Smalltalk makes messaging, state retention, and extreme late binding central to the original lineage. Snyder's analysis shows why encapsulation and inheritance are separable design dimensions rather than synonyms.

Verification

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