This talk is a historical & philosophical journey deep into the heart of darkness, er, objectoriented programming (OOP). Join me as I have my world shaken by the discovery that objects & classes aren't OOP's most important concepts: messages & late binding are. We'll try to peek inside the heads of Alan Kay & other OOP founders as they created languages like Smalltalk, and find that those "old" ideas seem strikingly relevant today. Our jaws may drop as we realize that OOP & functional programming aren't as different as we may have thought and that the 1st OO language wasn't created in the 60's or 70's, but much, much earlier… What awaits us at the end of this journey? At worst, we'll undergo a brief crisis of faith in everything we ever thought we knew about programming. (A support group will meet after the conference.) At best, we'll shift the way we view this nearubiquitous but oftmisunderstood paradigm, and walk away with new insights for how we architect & understand our code.

Presenter: Anjana Vakil
Event: Øredev Conference