Building Objects Out of Plato: Applying Philosophy, Symbolism, and Analogy to Software Design

摘要

Few of us think of Plato when designing software systems—but maybe we should. Viewing objects philosophically allows us to analyze them in new ways, borrowed not only from philosophy but also from art, music, psychology, and literature. The analysis of literary symbolism in particular is surprisingly applicable to object-oriented design. Unlike Cobol, Fortran, or even Pascal, object-oriented languages are based on the philosophy of Plato. According to Plato, each real-world object is an approximation of its ideal form. A particular tree is an instance of the Tree form, which defines the characteristics all trees have in common. Plato might say that a Java class is similar to a platonic form, because it generalizes all possible class instances.