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Yeah, object orientation isn't just a language feature, it's a pattern for structuring interaction with data.

And as for object orientation being less useful in immutable languages, I see it used plenty.

Erlang and haskell both define dictionary types that return new copies of the dictionary on what would normally be mutating function calls. The dictionary's gory details are hidden behind the object's mask, leaving the user free to ignore if it is a hash into an array of arrays, as many dicts used to be and as allows sharing most of the entries between copies of the dict until resizing, or maybe it's actually a balanced tree or just an a-list.

The outer code doesn't need to know because you create and manipulate the dictionary abstractly through helper functions, be they attached via the language or simply exposed while leaving the implementation opaque.

Object orientation will also be used to hide the implementations of files, sockets, and other abstract resources.

Many interfaces throughout the linux kernel use a plain C form of object orientation, a language which is definitely not object oriented on its own, filling out an 'interface' structure with functions to be used for objects originating from a particular area, allowing the kernel to interact abstractly with filesystems via the function pointers in the struct, for example.




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