The Object Paradigm as a Future System Life Cycle Method.

System life cycle methods are often viewed as collections of rules that are used to guide project progress; they usually have an indirect relationship to a project's architectural principles, paradigms, and technologies. The object paradigm has technological support for architectural specification, for abstraction, for performance tuning, and for maintenance, and so can provide direct guidance for system life cycles. Abstraction and type inheritance support prototyping and system evolution. Experience has shown the value of inheritance mechanisms, but it also shows a need for a better understanding of the semantics and formalisms underlying inheritance, especially for multiple inheritance. The object paradigm and an associated method can evolve together as objects learn to administer their own documentation, configuration information, and other expertise of value to the system life cycle.