[asavinov]

Would like to mention concept-oriented programming [1] which is work in progress but has highly ambitious goals of changing the way we think of programming. The initial idea is to make references active and customized elements of the program which can intercept all accesses to the represented objects. A new programming construct, called concept (hence the name of the approach), describes both behavior of references and behavior of objects. Objects exist in a hierarchy modeled by the concept hierarchy. IS-IN relation is used instead of the traditional IS-A. Also, concept-oriented programming distinguishes between incoming and outgoing methods, that is, every method has two versions: for external access and for internal access. More papers in [2].

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1501.00720 [2] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alexandr_Savinov

Disclaimer: I am the author of concept-oriented programming and data model

[DonbunEf7]

How does your research interact with object-capability models of computation, as in the E programming language?

[asavinov]

(I can be wrong but) as far as I understand E is based on objects and messages as primary mechanisms, that is, we do not know where objects exist, how they are managed and how messages are transferred. Concept-oriented programming (COP) is a references-first approach while objects are defined as being functions of references, that is, object is a derived (secondary) element of the model and the goal is to be able to have full control over this mechanism (custom heap, custom garbage collection, custom access control and security model etc.)

What I see similar in object-capability model and COP is that they both try to treat object access as a highly important part of a system behavior. In COP, I used to write that it is more important what happens during access rather than in the object itself. Hence, being able to make these intermediate actions integral part of the program (and develop good PL for that purpose) is very important.