The history of object-oriented programming, commonly referred to as OOP, started off with two languages. Simula 1 and Simula 67. Simula 67 brought about the key concepts of object-oriented programming. Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard developed the Simula languages in the middle of the 1960's. The Nygaards work in operational research created a need for precise tools for the description and simulation of complex man-machine systems. The idea was created for developing a language that could be used for system description (for people) and system prescription (as a computer program through a compiler).
There are several object-oriented languages. The three most common ones are, Smalltalk, Java, and C++.
Smalltalk was developed in the 1970's. Alan Kay created it at the Xerox Corporation Palo Alto Research Center. Although it never achieved the commercial success of other languages, "Smalltalk is considered by many to be the only true object-oriented programming environment, and the one against which all others must be compared" ("Smalltalk").
Java, developed by Sun Microsystems, was originally called OAK. It was designed to be used in hand held devices and set-top boxes (i.e. Web TV). In 1995, OAK had not seen the success that Sun had hoped, so they changed the name to Java. Along with the name change came a change in environment. Sun modified the language to take advantage of the surge in use of the Internet.
C++ in short is a better version of C. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup at Bell Labs. C++ is the most popular object-oriented languages for graphical applications. .
"C++ supports essentially every desirable behavior and most of the undesirable ones of its predecessor, but provides language improvements" (Reddy and Wise) that more closely resemble the English language.
From machine language (0 and 1) to object-oriented programming (Java and Smalltalk); the revolution has been ever changing.
