The Howdy Glossary

Flavors is a component of the Common Lisp Object System (CLOS), developed by Daniel G. Bobrow and his team at Xerox PARC in the late 1970s. It serves as an object-oriented metaobject system within Common Lisp, enabling users to create new classes and methods, thereby enhancing the language's capabilities for specific needs. Objects in CLOS are instances of classes that can inherit properties from superclasses, which promotes modular design and increases code reusability. The innovative use of prototypes allows each class to be an instance of a metaclass, offering a level of flexibility unprecedented at its time.

The system introduced several unique features that set it apart from other object-oriented programming systems. Specifically, Flavors allowed class definition through prototypes where classes were instances of metaclasses, facilitating dynamic class modification during runtime—a rare feature among its competitors. The support for multiple inheritance enabled objects to derive attributes from various superclasses, thus enhancing code reusability and encouraging modular design. These attributes made Flavors stand out as an advanced object-oriented programming environment within Common Lisp and contributed significantly to its reputation for flexibility and robustness.

Moreover, Flavors faced competition from other emerging object-oriented languages like Smalltalk, Object Pascal by Apple, and Objective-C by NeXT. While Smalltalk emphasized simplicity with message-passing paradigms contrasting Flavors' prototype-based approach with multiple inheritance support; languages like Object Pascal focused on static typing alongside message-passing paradigms challenging different aspects of object orientation compared to Flavors' flexibilities such as dynamic runtime modifications. Despite these competitive pressures, Flavors’ innovative features—like flexible class definitions using prototypes/metaclasses and runtime dynamism—solidified its standing as a powerful tool for sophisticated object-oriented programming in the landscape dominated by evolving technologies around it.