History
The term "late binding" dates back to at least the 1960s, where it can be found in Communications of the ACM. The term was widely used to describe languages such as LISP, though usually with negative connotations about performance.
In the 1980s Smalltalk popularized object-oriented programming (OOP) and with it late binding. Dr. Alan Kay once said, "OOP to me means only messaging, local retention, and protection and hiding of state-process, and extreme late-binding of all things. It can be done in Smalltalk and in LISP. There are possibly other systems in which this is possible, but I'm not aware of them."
In the early to mid-1990s, Microsoft heavily promoted its COM standard as a binary interface between different OOP programming languages. COM programming equally promoted early and late binding, with many languages supporting both at the syntax level.
In 2000, Alex Martelli coined the term "duck typing" to refer to the same concept, but with a different emphasis. While late binding generally focuses on implementation details, duck typing focuses on the ability to ignore types and concentrate on the methods an object currently has.
Read more about this topic: Late Binding
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“[Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.”
—Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“The awareness that health is dependent upon habits that we control makes us the first generation in history that to a large extent determines its own destiny.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)