[InfiniteRand]

Well, the author recommends induction as a means of figuring this out, and it seems for induction to work we need to have some existing example to induce the principle from (if I am remembering my maths, I might not be). So to figure out our concept it may be worth taking a look at what the use of object-oriented features is, and use that as a starting point. Maybe, again I am a little rusty on my inductive reasoning.

I think one thing that strikes me with Object-oriented programming in general is the idea of data management and function management.

I guess if we look at the features that are associated with object-orientation (I am not pretending that I am being strictly inductive at this point, although I think this is vaguely inductive), I would say that it takes the management and organization of programming concepts, such as data and function organization, and embeds it into the language itself.

[techadv]

The article author was referring to inductive reasoning in the sense of epistemology, which is not the same as mathematical induction. In fact, mathematical induction is a deductive reasoning technique.

Here's the relevant wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning

[jorgis]

You might also refer to this as "recursion" when talking about computer programming.