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The metaclass of Metaclass is called Metaclass class which again is an instance of class Metaclass. In Smalltalk-80, every class (except Object ) has a superclass . The abstract superclass of all metaclasses is Class , which describes the general nature of classes.
Before a class derived from an abstract class can be instantiated, all abstract methods of its parent classes must be implemented by some class in the derivation chain. [25] Most object-oriented programming languages allow the programmer to specify which classes are considered abstract and will not allow these to be instantiated. For example ...
In languages supporting multiple inheritance, such as C++, interfaces are implemented as abstract classes. In languages without explicit support, protocols are often still present as conventions. This is known as duck typing. For example, in Python, any class can implement an __iter__ method and be used as a collection. [3]
Each class is an instance of the metaclass of that class. Metaclasses in turn are also objects, and are all instances of a class named Metaclass. Classes contain method dictionaries that map selectors (the equivalent of function procedure names in other languages) to method objects, objects that are executed to evaluate messages.
Composition over inheritance (or composite reuse principle) in object-oriented programming (OOP) is the principle that classes should favor polymorphic behavior and code reuse by their composition (by containing instances of other classes that implement the desired functionality) over inheritance from a base or parent class. [2]
In class-based object-oriented programming, abstract types are implemented as abstract classes (also known as abstract base classes), and concrete types as concrete classes. In generic programming , the analogous notion is a concept , which similarly specifies syntax and semantics, but does not require a subtype relationship: two unrelated ...
It should be possible to define a new operation for (some) classes of an object structure without changing the classes. When new operations are needed frequently and the object structure consists of many unrelated classes, it's inflexible to add new subclasses each time a new operation is required because "[..] distributing all these operations across the various node classes leads to a system ...
Modern object-oriented languages, such as C++ and Java, support a form of abstract data types. When a class is used as a type, it is an abstract type that refers to a hidden representation. In this model, an ADT is typically implemented as a class, and each instance of the ADT is usually an object of that class.