CONCEPT
Object-Oriented Programming
Object-oriented programming is the paradigm Kay developed at Xerox PARC in which software is structured as collections of objects — self-contained units that combine state and behavior — that interact by sending each other messages. Each object knows what it is and what it can do, but it does not know the internal workings of the objects it communicates with. This architecture mirrors biological cells and, Kay argued, mirrors the architecture of human knowledge itself. Every domain of expertise is a self-contained object that communicates with other domains through shared concepts, arguments, and analogies — messages — without requiring each domain to understand the others' internal workings.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The paradigm emerged from Kay's conviction that the complexity of large software systems would eventually exceed human cognitive capacity unless the architecture of the software mirrored an architecture that biology had already solved. A single human body contains trillions of cells, each a relatively simple unit, organized into tissues, organs, and systems through message-passing at every