Object-Oriented Style

Writing programs in continuation-passing style is a good tool for understanding reified continuations and call/cc. Similarly, writing programs in an object-oriented style is a good tool for understanding object-oriented language features, such as super (or object) method invocation. We present an object-oriented style and a simple example of its use. From this example, we present protocols that make this style more natural. We then enforce the style and protocols by introducing a macro per class. These macros are macrogenerating macros that package the syntactic redundancy of the style, approximating a compiler for a conventional object-oriented language. Exercises are scattered throughout to help the energetic reader develop a deeper understanding of the paper’s concepts.