[TYPES] The type/object distinction and possible synthesis of OOP and imperative programming languages

[Mark Janssen]

Hello,

I'm new to the list and hoping this might be the right place to
introduce something that has provoked a bit of an argument in my
programming community.

I'm from the Python programming community.  Python is an "interpreted"
language.  Since 2001, Python's has migrated towards a "pure" Object
model (ref: http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.2/descrintro/).
Prior to then, it had both types and classes and these types were
anchored to the underlying C code and the machine/hardware
architecture itself.  After the 2001 "type/class unification" , it
went towards Alan Kay's ideal of "everything is an object".  From
then, every user-defined class inherited from the abstract Object,
rooted in nothing but a pure abstract ideal.  The parser, lexer, and
such spin these abstrations into something that can be run on the
actual hardware.

As a contrast, this is very distinct from C++, where everything is
concretely rooted in the language's type model which in *itself* is
rooted (from it's long history) in the CPU architecture.   The STL,
for example, has many Container types, but each of them requires using
a single concrete type for homogenous containers or uses machine
pointers to hold arbitrary items in heterogeneous containers (caveat:
I haven't programmed in C++ for a long time, so it's possible this
might not be correct anymore).

My question is:  Is there something in the Computer Science literature
that has noticed this distinction/development in programming language
design and history?

It's very significant to me, because as languages went higher and
higher to this pure OOP model, the programmer+data ecosystem tended
towards very personal object hierarchies because now the hardware no
longer formed a common basis of interaction (note also, OOPs promise
of re-usable code never materialized).

It's not unlike LISP, where the power of its general language
architecture tended towards hyperpersonal mini macro languages --
making it hardly used, in practice, though it was and is so powerful,
in theory.

That all being said, the thrust of this whole effort is to possibly
advance Computer Science and language design, because in-between the
purely concrete "object" architecture of the imperative programming
languages and the purely abstract object architecture of
object-oriented programming languages is a possible middle ground that
could unite them all.

Thank you for your time.

Mark Janssen
Tacoma, Washington