Object Oriented Concepts

Classes and Objects

I thought of writing these descriptions for colleagues who still get these terms mixed up like I sometimes do.

Objects

Objects represent particular instances of a specific class. It’s an entity which has attributes and behaviour, the attributes and defined by the class definition [1].The object uses the defined structure used by the class to create or ad new objects.

The attributes that exist in an object can change when messages are passed to perform a task.

Object Oriented Design

Easy maintenance of programs due to reduced ripple effects and high modularity
Objects are reusable
Illustrate mappings from the real world to systems [2].

Classes

A class is a set of objects which have similar or common characteristics and behaviour .They describe the attributes and methods that implement the behaviour.
A class can also be referred to as a template thus a guide or outline of performing tasks.

Classes allow reusability by novice programmers of classes that already exist.
In overall objects and classes represent abstractions in a more easy, direct and explicit manner. [1]

1. Lecture Notes on Object Oriented Concepts by John Gachoka
2. http://peoples.cs.vt.edu/~kafura/cs2704/mapping.html