Simula (as in "SIMUlation LAnguage") is based on the Algol60 programming language. It is highly standardized, allowing it to be portable between different computing platforms. Many important object-oriented concepts like classes, objects, abstract data types, and inheritance were introduced in Simula. Although Simula has never been widely used, the Smalltalk, C++, and Java programming languages have been influenced by Simula.

History

Simula was designed and built by Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard at the Norwegian Computing Centre in Oslo between 1962 and 1967. The first iteration of Simula is now referred to as Simula I. The first prototype of Simula I was implemented in 1964 for discrete event simulation, which, in essence, tells how to generate new values for variables and the times the new values should take effect. Simula I was geared toward problems in operations research, which is the study of quantitative (that is, statistical) methods like...