[pjmlp]

I also did not state that book was the canonical ECS model, rather that it was one of the first sources to move into discussing components instead of classes.

COM and DirectX aren't distributed object systems, nor Objective-C protocols, for example.

Don't confuse COM with DCOM and COM+.

Then there are the component models based on traits, mixins, patterns, message passing, type classes,... plenty of variants scattered around SIGPLAN and ECOOP papers.

[Rusky]

You are still conflating two totally unrelated things.

The book is one of the first sources to move into discussing "components," as in coding against interfaces/protocols/traits/etc.

ECS deals with "components," as in pieces of data composed using a relational model. This has nothing to do with interfaces or protocols whatsoever! It is practically the opposite thing- working directly with raw data, with no abstraction boundary.

You can't just pattern match on the word "component" and expect it to mean the same thing to everyone.

[pjmlp]

That is the next step, data oriented programming, which many confuse with ECS, as they tend to be used together.

[Rusky]

I am not talking about data oriented programming. With or without that sort of memory layout optimization, ECS "component" still refers to un-abstracted chunks of concrete data rather than interfaces/protocols/etc.

Let's step back even further and consider Unity's pre-DOTS "entities" and "components." These do not take the data oriented approach, are not typically even classified as ECS (e.g. because they lack the System aspect of that design). However, the components are clearly chunks of concrete data (transforms, meshes, rendering parameters, rigid bodies, etc.) rather than interfaces/protocols.

This is the sense in which ECS means "component." That book is not relevant to this sense.

[pjmlp]

A book that I clearly referred it was only one of the first ones that somehow started talking about this, I never stated it was the definition of ECS.

Apparently making the point about how relevant this specific book is, is what matters in this whole thread.

[Rusky]

It didn't start talking about "this." It started talking about something unrelated that you mistook for "this."