A survey of concurrent object-oriented languages

Abstract

SUMMARY During the last decade object-oriented programming has grown from marginal influence into widespread acceptance. During the same period, progress in hardware and networking has changed the computing environment from sequential to parallel. Multi-processor workstations and clusters are now quite common. Unnumbered proposals have been made to combine both developments. Always the prime objective has been to provide the advantages of object-oriented software design at the increased power of parallel machines. However, combining both concepts has proven to be notoriously difficult. Depending on the approach, often key characteristics of either the object-oriented paradigm or key performance factors of parallelism are sacrificed, resulting in unsatisfactory languages. This survey first recapitulates well-known characteristics of both the object-oriented paradigm and parallel programming, and then marks out the design space of possible combinations by identifying various interdependencies of key concepts. The design space is then filled with data points: for 111 proposed languages we provide brief characteristics and feature tables. Feature tables, the comprehensive bibliography, and web-addresses might help in identifying open questions and preventing re-inventions. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.