An oversimplified story is that BETA is the response from the creators of SIMULA (arguably the first object-oriented language) to the languages it inspired (e.g

An oversimplified story is that BETA is the response from the creators of SIMULA (arguably the first object-oriented language) to the languages it inspired (e.g., Smalltalk and C++). More here: [1] There are some interesting and unique concepts in BETA, but IIRC the most interesting is the "pattern": >The abstraction mechanisms include class, procedure, function, coroutine, process, exception and many more, all unified into the ultimate abstraction mechanism: the pattern. In addition to the pattern, BETA has subpattern, virtual pattern and pattern variable. This unification gives a uniform treatment of abstraction mechanisms and a number of new ones. Most object-oriented languages have classes, subclasses and virtual procedures, and some have procedure variables. Since a pattern is a generalization of abstraction mechanisms like class, procedure, function, etc., the notions of subpattern, virtual pattern and pattern variable also apply to these abstraction mechanisms. In addition to the above mentioned abstraction mechanisms, the pattern subsumes notions such as generic package and task type as known from Ada. [1] http://kristennygaard.org/FORSKNINGSDOK_MAPPE/F_BETA_hovedside.html http://kristennygaard.org/FORSKNINGSDOK_MAPPE/F_BETA_hovedsi...