Object oriented OS ?

[Micom 2000]

I've run across the phrase "Object Oriented" programming or OS's many times over the years and still don't know what that actually means. OS/2 was supposedly of this nature and NeXT systems refer to it. Most references I've seen seem to assume it's a self-obvious term or else get into intense computerese that I can't wrap my brain around.

Anyone want to attempt this, since I'm sure I am not alone in my befuddlement ?

 

[mbbrutman]

It's a programming style.

Imagine a simple OS. If you were to 'open' a file, the OS might try to do something dumb, like use a text editor on an MP3 file. Clearly not good.

Now imagine a slightly more advanced OS. It would check the file extension (.mp3) and choose an application that is more appropriate to open the file. This is better, but changing the extension of a file can make it unreadable by the OS until the correct extension is restored.

Now imagine a better OS. The OS doesn't know what is in the file, nor does it care. The file (or in this case, object) knows what needs to be done to open it. So the OS says to the file 'Open', and the file calls the correct code to start running to actually get the file to do whatever.

Or another example .. In a simple OS the OS might track which icons belong to each files. In an object oriented OS, the OS says to the file 'draw your icon here' and the file has the code or data to make it possible.

These are contrived examples, but you get the idea.

And the general idea is that the OS doesn't need to know everything about every file, menu, etc. The files do more of the work of taking care of themselves.

 

[Chris2005]

if I may interject. I have found that programmers are the worst people to ask for explanations about the topic of oop. It's been a while for me, so I'm not necessarily a good person to ask either. Just that when I had asked, I got basically no help understanding the topic. One of those wacky conundrums in life. No offence though
But if I can take a crack at answer the question at a lower level of abstraction, oop is a means of modularizing portions of code. It's much more then just building a program as seperate procedures or whatever (as opposed to generating messy spaghetti code, which often gets done by newbies working in interpreted BASIC). But the modules become autonomous agents, able to receive and respond to requests from others, but usually inhibit their ability to have their own internal data altered (except on a predetermined basis).
See I told you I couldn't do the topic justice. But still better then Mikey B's LOL LOL LOL.
Actually I can't say anything about how it applies to an OS. And neither do I care. Nyeh.
OOP code is far easier to maintain then simple procedural code. This much I know. When you're dealing with 10s of millions of lines, you need OOP. But programs are getting so big these days, another paradigm is going to have to take it's place.
Truthfully, topics like these can't receive justice in a paragraph or two. You have to have the desire and/or need to understand (i.e use) it. That's my feeling. One guy would try to explain it to me many moons ago. I phrased it this way - "look, if you had to go to an interview and be asked the question what is oop, what would you give as an answer?". His reply was toss all your fruit in one basket, and that's oop! It was quite funny at the time in actuality, being I knew how much of a goober the guy was.