BETA is a pure object-oriented language from the Scandinavian School in System Development where the first object-oriented language Simula was developed.
From a technical perspective, BETA provides the following unique feature:
- Classes and Procedures are unified to one concept, a Pattern.
- Classes are defined as properties/attributes of objects. This means that a class cannot be instantiated without an explicit object context.
- A consequence of the above is that BETA supports nested classes; and BETA's nested classes are indeed one of the primary sources of inspiration for Java's so-called inner classes.
- Classes can be virtually defined (much like virtual methods can in most other object-oriented programming languages).
- Virtual entities (such as methods and classes) are never overwritten; instead they are refined or specialized.
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