1. Context

1.1 Trends influencing object-oriented languages

There are two major trends behind object-oriented languages: artificial intelligence and parallelism. Fundamentally, three other currents have also contributed to making object languages what we know them to be: software engineering, simulation and programming languages for the Web.

Artificial intelligence has brought its need for dynamic linking and the expressive power of languages. This trend has also brought to the object language community a particularly rich dynamism and concern for theoretical rigor.

Parallelism is a relatively more discreet trend (in object languages), but one that has nevertheless had a persistent influence on them. Indeed, object languages (under the less well-defined...