Scribd
Upload
31 views

What Is An Object

Objects are key concepts in object-oriented programming. Real-world objects have states (characteristics) and behaviors (actions), and software objects similarly encapsulate states that can be changed through methods that represent behaviors. Understanding real objects helps conceptualize software objects - they bundle code, data, and behaviors to achieve modularity, information hiding, and code reuse.

Uploaded by

murtisusanto
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
31 views

What Is An Object

Objects are key concepts in object-oriented programming. Real-world objects have states (characteristics) and behaviors (actions), and software objects similarly encapsulate states that can be changed through methods that represent behaviors. Understanding real objects helps conceptualize software objects - they bundle code, data, and behaviors to achieve modularity, information hiding, and code reuse.

Uploaded by

murtisusanto
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

What Is an Object?

Objects are key to understanding object-oriented technology. Look around right now and
you'll find many examples of real-world objects: your dog, your desk, your television set,
your bicycle.
Real-world objects share two characteristics: They all have state and behavior. Dogs have
state (name, color, breed, hungry) and behavior (barking, fetching, wagging tail).
Bicycles also have state (current gear, current pedal cadence, current speed) and behavior
(changing gear, changing pedal cadence, applying brakes). Identifying the state and
behavior for real-world objects is a great way to begin thinking in terms of objectoriented programming.
Take a minute right now to observe the real-world objects that are in your immediate
area. For each object that you see, ask yourself two questions: "What possible states can
this object be in?" and "What possible behavior can this object perform?". Make sure to
write down your observations. As you do, you'll notice that real-world objects vary in
complexity; your desktop lamp may have only two possible states (on and off) and two
possible behaviors (turn on, turn off), but your desktop radio might have additional states
(on, off, current volume, current station) and behavior (turn on, turn off, increase volume,
decrease volume, seek, scan, and tune). You may also notice that some objects, in turn,
will also contain other objects. These real-world observations all translate into the world
of object-oriented programming.

A software object.
Software objects are conceptually similar to real-world objects: they too consist of state
and related behavior. An object stores its state in fields (variables in some programming
languages) and exposes its behavior through methods (functions in some programming
languages). Methods operate on an object's internal state and serve as the primary
mechanism for object-to-object communication. Hiding internal state and requiring all

interaction to be performed through an object's methods is known as data encapsulation


a fundamental principle of object-oriented programming.
Consider a bicycle, for example:

A bicycle modeled as a software object.


By attributing state (current speed, current pedal cadence, and current gear) and providing
methods for changing that state, the object remains in control of how the outside world is
allowed to use it. For example, if the bicycle only has 6 gears, a method to change gears
could reject any value that is less than 1 or greater than 6.
Bundling code into individual software objects provides a number of benefits, including:
1. Modularity: The source code for an object can be written and maintained
independently of the source code for other objects. Once created, an object can be
easily passed around inside the system.
2. Information-hiding: By interacting only with an object's methods, the details of its
internal implementation remain hidden from the outside world.
3. Code re-use: If an object already exists (perhaps written by another software
developer), you can use that object in your program. This allows specialists to
implement/test/debug complex, task-specific objects, which you can then trust to
run in your own code.
4. Pluggability and debugging ease: If a particular object turns out to be problematic,
you can simply remove it from your application and plug in a different object as
its replacement. This is analogous to fixing mechanical problems in the real
world. If a bolt breaks, you replace it, not the entire machine.

You might also like