Moving Toward Object‐Oriented Programming
Bart Baesens, Aimée Backiel, Seppe vanden Broucke · 2012
This chapter first provides a general overview of the basic concepts of the object-oriented programming paradigm. Rather than having to think about data and code as two separate concepts, an object-oriented program merges the two in the concept of an object. This increases understanding (analysts and programmers can consider objects of interest without internalizing the workings of the complete program) and ease of maintenance. To realize the latter, object-oriented programming applies two concepts known as encapsulation and information hiding. Object-oriented programming also defines concepts such as polymorphism and inheritance, to help with structuring programs so that they can be easily extended and evolved. Next, the chapter discusses how to work with classes and objects in Java. Further, it explains in detail how to define data (variables) and behaviors (methods) for classes. The chapter ends with an overview of helpful built-in classes in Java SE.