Linux Journal: CORBA, Part I

“Over the last 20 years or so, object-oriented programming
techniques have matured from a curiosity to a major component of
almost every software engineer’s programming toolbox. The reason
for this growth is easy to understand: object-oriented programming
techniques help software engineers solve real problems, that is,
constructing and maintaining software products.

“In the Linux world, one can find object-oriented programming
techniques realized in a variety of programming languages,
including Perl, Python, Java and C++. Even though these programming
languages utilize different programming constructs to realize
object-oriented techniques, they all have one thing in common: the
mechanism they employ to invoke an object’s method. In all of these
languages, an object’s method is invoked by treating the method as
if it were a regular function/procedure, providing a special
reference to the object with which the method is associated. For
example, C++ uses the keyword ‘this’ while Python uses the keyword
‘self’ to refer to the object.

“The designers of these various programming languages have
chosen to use this mechanism because it works and because it
provides the best performance as compared to alternative
mechanisms—an excellent design trade-off, but there is a
problem. For those who construct applications that use multiple
processes, this mechanism prevents them from using object-oriented
techniques between processes. Simply stated, it is not possible to
invoke an object’s method in one process from an object in another
process…”

Complete
Story