Contemporary object-oriented programming languages employ the class as the unit of reuse. At the same time, the class is also the unit of design. This implies that to reuse a class, the design of the class must fit the design in which it will be reused. While this serves planned reuse, it hampers unplanned reuse. Obviously, unplanned reuse is much more important if widespread reuse is desired.
TOM is an object-oriented programming language that advocates unplanned reuse of code.
An extension can add methods, variables, and superclasses to a class. Extensions can even be loaded at run time. Unplanned reuse removes the privilege of class modification from the class designer and hands it over as a right to the user. Dive into the TOM documentation or publications , read the tutorialesque highlights , or go straight to an actual-code example of the extensibility of classes .