Simula

What Does Simula Mean?

Simula is the name of a collection of programming languages pioneered in the 1960s in Norway. It represents a significant development in the programming systems of its time, and was instrumental in advancing the use of UNIVAC and other computer models in that era.

Techopedia Explains Simula

IT experts characterize Simula as in some ways the first object-oriented programming (OOP) language. Developers Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard helped lead the charge to design programming languages around objects instead of procedures or linear functions. The idea of object “classes” so vital to modern OOP development was also new to Simula.

In Simula, objects communicated with each other through messages, using the traditional idea of sender and receiver. Simula is hailed as the precursor to languages like C++ and Java. Simula was useful in a variety of computing disciplines prior to the development of these much newer OOP languages and systems.

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Margaret Rouse

Technology Specialist

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.

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