The game engine people have the right idea with their entity-component-system [1] model. Essentially, it models the program as a big relational database instead

The game engine people have the right idea with their entity-component-system [1] model. Essentially, it models the program as a big relational database instead of a graph of objects. It can work pretty well. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity%E2%80%93component%E2%80%93system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity%E2%80%93component%E2%80...