CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION TO OBJECT
ORIENTED PROGRAMMING
Define Object Oriented Programming
A type of programming in which programmers define not only the data type of a data structure,
but also the types of operations (functions) that can be applied to the data structure. In this way,
the data structure becomes an object that includes both data and functions. In addition,
programmers can create relationships between one object and another. For example, objects can
inherit characteristics from other objects.
Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of
"objects", which are data structures that contain data, in the form of fields, often known as
attributes; and code, in the form of procedures, often known as methods. A distinguishing
feature of objects is that an object's procedures can access and often modify the data fields of the
object with which they are associated (objects have a notion of "this"). In object-oriented
programming, computer programs are designed by making them out of objects that interact with
one another. There is significant diversity in object-oriented programming, but most popular
languages are class-based, meaning that objects are instances of classes, which typically also
determines their type.
Evolution of Object Oriented Programming
The object-oriented paradigm took its shape from the initial concept of a new programming
approach, while the interest in design and analysis methods came much later.
The first object–oriented language was Simula (Simulation of real systems) that was
developed in 1960 by researchers at the Norwegian Computing Center.
In 1970, Alan Kay and his research group at Xerox PARK created a personal computer
named Dynabook and the first pure object-oriented programming language (OOPL) -
Smalltalk, for programming the Dynabook.
In the 1980s, Grady Booch published a paper titled Object Oriented Design that mainly
presented a design for the programming language, Ada. In the ensuing editions, he
extended his ideas to a complete object–oriented design method.
In the 1990s, Coad incorporated behavioral ideas to object-oriented methods.
The other significant innovations were Object Modelling Techniques (OMT) by James
Rumbaugh and Object-Oriented Software Engineering (OOSE) by Ivar Jacobson.
Programming paradigms
A programming paradigm is a fundamental style of computer programming, a way of
building the structure and elements of computer programs.
The following are considered the main programming paradigms. There is inevitably some
overlap in these paradigms but the main features or identifiable differences are summarized
below:
Imperative programming – defines computation as statements that change a program state
Procedural programming, structured programming – specifies the steps the program must
take to reach the desired state.
Structured programming (sometimes known as modular programming) is a subset of
procedural programming that enforces a logical structure on the program being written to
make it more efficient and easier to understand and modify. Modular programming is the
process of subdividing a computer program into separate sub-programs.
Declarative programming – defines computation logic without defining its control flow.
Functional programming – treats computation as the evaluation of mathematical functions
and avoids state and mutable data
Object-oriented programming (OOP) – organizes programs as objects: data structures
consisting of datafields and methods together with their interactions.
Event-driven programming – the flow of the program is determined by events, such as
sensor outputs or user actions (mouse clicks, key presses) or messages from other programs
or threads.
Automata-based programming – a program, or part, is treated as a model of a finite state
machine or any other formal automata.
Merits and demerits of OOP
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.
Examples of object oriented languages
Many of the most widely used programming languages are multi-paradigm programming
languages that support object-oriented programming to a greater or lesser degree, typically in
combination with imperative, procedural programming. Significant object-oriented languages
include C++, Objective-C, Smalltalk, Delphi, Java, C#, Perl, Python, Ruby and PHP.
Object Oriented Databases (OODBs)
An object-oriented database management system (OODBMS) is a database management system
that supports the creation and modeling of data as objects. OODBMS also includes support for
classes of objects and the inheritance of class properties, and incorporates methods, subclasses
and their objects. Most of the object databases also offer some kind of query language,
