An Approach to Programming Based on Concepts
Abstract
In this paper we describe a new approach to programming which generalizes object-oriented programming. It is based on using a new programming construct, called concept, which generalizes classes. Concept is defined as a pair of two classes: one reference class and one object class. Each concept has a parent concept which is specified using inclusion relation generalizing inheritance. We describe several important mechanisms such as reference resolution, context stack, dual methods and life-cycle management, inheritance and polymorphism. This approach to programming is positioned as a new programming paradigm and therefore we formulate its main principles and rules.
Table of contents:
1 Introduction 2
2 Representation and Access 3
2.1 Entities and Identities 3
2.2 Inclusion Relation 5
2.3 Substitution Relation 7
3 Concepts for Describing Entities and Identities 8
3.1 Reference Class and Object Class 8
3.2 Concept Definition 9
3.3 Meta-Transition 12
4 Concept Inclusion 14
4.1 Complex References 14
4.2 Sequence of Access 16
4.3 Context Stack 20
4.4 Life-Cycle Management 22
5 Operations with References 25
5.1 Reference Structure and Parameters 25
5.2 Left and Right Casting 27
5.3 Reference Length Control 28
6 CoP as a Generalization of OOP 30
6.1 Inheritance 30
6.2 Polymorphism 32
6.3 Object Construction and Deletion 34
7 Principles of the Concept-Oriented Paradigm 35
7.1 There is Always Something in-between 35
7.2 There is Always Something out There 36
7.3 Everything Has an Identity and Entity 37
7.4 Everything is Relative and Virtual 39
8 Related Work 39
8.1 Hardware Level 39
8.2 Software Level 40
8.3 Design Patterns 41
8.4 Language Level 42
8.5 Conceptual Approaches 45
8.6 Concept Related Approaches 46
9 Conclusions 47
10 References 47
This and other papers can be downloaded from http://conceptoriented.org (section Publications) or directly here.
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