Object-oriented programming (OOP) was developed by Norwegian computer scientists Kristen Nygaard and Ole-Johan Dahl in the 1960s at the Norwegian Computing Center. They created the Simula programming languages (Simula I and Simula 67), which introduced the core concepts of OOP such as objects, classes, inheritance, and dynamic binding
. While Alan Kay later coined the term "object-oriented programming" in the 1970s and developed the influential Smalltalk language, the foundational ideas and the first practical implementation of OOP originated with Nygaard and Dahl through their work on Simula
. In summary:
- Kristen Nygaard and Ole-Johan Dahl are credited as the co-inventors of object-oriented programming.
- They developed Simula in the 1960s, which introduced key OOP concepts.
- Alan Kay popularized the term and further developed OOP ideas with Smalltalk in the 1970s.
This pioneering work by Nygaard and Dahl earned them the 2001 A. M. Turing Award for their contributions to computer science
