I've been teaching myself type theory on and off over the past couple years. I've reach large sections of Pierce's Types and Programming Languages and Harper's Practical Foundations for Programming Languages, but there are still sections I need to either read for the first time or really understand.In Harper's section on classes, this is his introduction:It frequently arises that the values of atype are partitioned into a variety of classes, each classifying data with distinct internal structure. A good example is provided by the type of points in the plane, which may be classified according to whether they are represented in cartesian or polar form. Both  are represented by a pair of real numbers, but in the cartesian case these are  the x and y coordinates of the point, whereas in the polar case these are its distance, r, from the origin and its angle, , with the polar axis. A classified  value is said to be an object, or instance, of its class. The class determines the  type of the classified data, which is called the instance type of the class. The classified data itself is called the instance data of the object.As far as I can tell, this does not align closely with objects as they are commonly understood in programming languages today. When I think of classes, I think primarily of encapsulation and inheritance, not of classifying different representations of a value.Am I right in believing this is not the same definition of classes that is commonly used? Is this definition common in the academic community? Are there any programming languages where these kinds of classes are used?UpdateSince this question seems to have attracted some recent activity, I'll update with my current understanding.We start with the general, abstract notion of a two-dimensional table. Each cell in the table specifies a function acting on a specified type. Thus, the rows are classes and the columns methods with dynamic dispatch.If we take the row-oriented view, then we have the standard notion of a class in mainstream OOP languages: a record of functions acting on a specified type of data. If we instead take the less commonly considered column-oriented view, we have a function that uses case analysis on the type of its first argument. The fundamental take-away is that neither the row or column-oriented view is more natural; we must understand classified values as a two-dimensional table.It does turn out that we need need sum types to implement this realization, but that is only one aspect. We also need product types, and then to view these product and sum types in the right light.
What does Harper mean by class?
terminology;programming languages;type theory;object oriented