Chapter 13. Objects and the Internet

Perhaps the major reason that objects have become so popular in the IT industry has to do with the Internet. Although object-oriented languages have been around basically as long as structured languages, it was only when the Internet emerged that objects gained wide acceptance.

Actually, the object-oriented language Smalltalk became popular during the 1980s and 1990s. And the object-based language C++ gained widespread acceptance in the 1990s. Smalltalk gained widespread support from object-oriented purists , and C++ became the first object language to become a force in the marketplace . Java, which was targeted specifically for networks, is an object-oriented language which has proved commercially successful. Now, with the introduction of .NET, object-oriented languages have become part of the mainstream. This chapter covers some of the object technologies that are used on the Internet.