• Although Self did not survive to truly become a modern OOP language, it was a second-generation OOP language. Then, in the early 1990s, Alexander Stepanov and Meng Lee pioneered generic programming and wrote the first versions of C++'s STL. The early 1990s saw the development of Microsoft's CORBA and COM, which were a natural extension of the ideas that led to the first Windows. API. This interface or component programming was a natural extension of encapsulation – a basic principle of OOP, as we will see. All these developments were aimed at better managing or reducing complexity. Since this was the original goal of OOP and these techniques are used in conjunction with classical OOP, we find it appropriate to consider them in a treatment on "OOP". The future of POO The future contains more standardization of functional programming techniques in OOP environments, particularly lambda expressions and closures, and more robust meta-programming constructs. Automatically applying design patterns via generic programming or meta-programming techniques is an attractive solution.