Why Object-Oriented Programing Works So Well

Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) can be dated back to the 1960s with its usage in a language called Simula67 and became popular in the 80s with the introduction of C++. Its popularity today continues, with many other languages such as Java, which continues to be the most popular and widely used language for business enterprises.

There have been many programming paradigms such as procedural, functional, declarative, reactive, aspect-oriented, and more that have challenged OOP, but OOP remains a popular and effective approach for writing code.

OOP, at its simplest, is defining data and methods to act on that data. There are other commonly referred to aspects of OOP such as inheritance, abstraction, polymorphism, encapsulation, etc, but I believe it is the simple definition of data and methods to act on data that makes OOP work so well. That is because it defines a structure that mirrors the physical components of a computer. A computer is made up of many components; but, each of those components’ purpose is to store data or process data.

The components of a computer consist of one or more processing units like a CPU or GPU, and one or more storage units, like RAM, HDD, or SSD. A processing unit takes in data from storage and applies a function which produces new data which is stored in a storage unit. This cycles over and over again, about 3 billion times per second (3 GHz).

Other paradigms focus on immutability of data, or data streaming of events, or side effect free functions and procedures. These concepts should be used where appropriate within OOP; but, they should not replace or even exist outside of OOP because they are really design patterns not a coding paradigm. Design patterns are a reusable approach to commonly encountered problems whereas a coding paradigm defines a structural approach that should be used across a code base to include its design patterns.

Object-Oriented Programming structures code in a way that aligns with the physical components of a computer and this alignment is why the OOP paradigm has been around since the 60s and continues to this day to work very well.