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ABSTRACT

This paper presents our experience building an extendible software development environment using the object-oriented paradigm. We have found that object instances provide a natural way to model program constructs, and to capture complex relationships between different aspects of a software system. The object-oriented paradigm can be efficiently implemented on standard hardware and software, and provides some degree of extendibility without requiring major modifications to the existing implementation. Unfortunately, we have also found that some natural extensions that we would like to make to the environment are not easily incorporated. We argue that the lack of extendibility is due to the object-oriented paradigm's lack of support for providing modifications and extensions to the object-oriented paradigm itself.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.7 Distribution, Maintenance, and Enhancement
          Subjects: Extensibility**
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.2 Language Classifications
          Subjects: Extensible languages

General Terms:
Design, Languages