Object Oriented Programming
Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm that uses "objects" and their interactions to design applications and computer programs.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
Programming techniques may include features such as encapsulation, modularity, polymorphism, and inheritance. It was not commonly used in mainstream software application development until the early 1990s. Many modern programming languages now support OOP.
Languages which are designed with the OOP paradigm allow programmers to think in
new ways. They will also support inheritance, and instead of using function
calls, they will use messages. The goal of a computer program is to alter data.
What the program does to the data is more important than how it does it.
Object-oriented programming is a method of programming based on a hierarchy of classes, and well-defined and cooperating objects.
Object-Oriented Programming has the following advantages over conventional approaches:
- OOP provides a clear modular structure for programs which makes it good for defining abstract datatypes where implementation details are hidden and the unit has a clearly defined interface.
- OOP makes it easy to maintain and modify existing code as new objects can be created with small differences to existing ones.
OOP provides a good framework for code libraries where supplied software components can be easily adapted and modified by the programmer. This is particularly useful for developing graphical user interfaces.
One object-oriented concept that helps objects work together is inheritance. Inheritance defines relationships among classes in an object-oriented language. In the Java programming language, all classes descend from java.lang.Object and implement its methods.
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