> I prefer the academic truth, validated by renowned peers in the industry, presented at acknowledged conferences, to random opinions on the Internet. You don'

> I prefer the academic truth, validated by renowned peers in the industry, presented at acknowledged conferences, to random opinions on the Internet. You don't even know who wrote the IEEE definition and who validated it. Second this isn't academic truth. This is just some arbitrary chosen standard chosen by industry. Not academic at all. In mathematics, the ultimate logical form of academia there is a term for "interfaces". It's called categories, and there's a entire theoretical framework behind it called "Category Theory". This theory of "interfaces" goes beyond just OOP and category theory can be used to foundation-ally describe all of mathematics and function as a sort of replacement of set theory. Don't worship authority for authorities sake. If the IEEE declared 1+1=3 would you believe it? Instead use your own brain. Do my arguments have merit? Does the IEEE definition seem inconsistent? Does my definition make logical sense? If you can think of these things on your own merits instead of blindly following the IEEE then you'll see that the definition of OOP is just something academia hasn't really thought about deeply from a theoretical and mathematical standpoint. OOP is more like a term that comes from applied engineering with very little theoretical foundation. If you want some sort of authority I googled some authoritative talk about category theory explained to programmers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMP6gI5mLHc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMP6gI5mLHc I'm sure maybe you heard of haskell and category theory? Haskell is a purely functional language and it has huge connections with category theory. Basically Haskell IS the language of interfaces. It's entire type system is centered around categories or AKA "interfaces". It is the defacto language of interfaces much more-so then OOP languages like Java. If you said haskell was OOP, people who love that language would vomit. Haskell is not OOP, but it has interfaces, so the obvious conclusion here is "interfaces" ARE not an OOP exclusive concept. It's therefore bad for a formal definitio of OOP. So now the question is WHAT is it about OOP that makes it uniquely OOP. Or is it just a hodgepodge of random stuff and it will be forever a word that is muddy, inconsistent and poorly defined?