What does it mean to be object oriented?

Answer 1

Object-oriented programming is an extension of structured programming (and, previously, procedural programming). An object essentially combines a data set and the procedures that can act upon that data into a single entity. The object can be declared to expose as much or as little of the actual data outside of the class, thus minimising the potential for invalidating the data.

The procedures (member methods) that act upon the data (member variables) generally include: mutators to set the data and, optionally, to validate incoming data; operations to modify the data in a controlled manner and; accessors to retrieve the data (either the data itself or, more commonly, a copy of the data). In addition, constructors allow the data to be initialised in a uniform manner while a destructor can be used to clean up any memory allocations used by the class.

Consumers of an object need not concern themselves with how the data is physically stored within the object, nor in how it is manipulated by the object. Consumers are only concerned with setting the data, modifying the data and retrieving the data. The object itself takes all responsibility for ensuring the data remains in a valid state at all times, and safely hides it from potential harm outside of the object.

As with structured programming, highly complex data structures can be created whereby objects contain other objects as data members. Objects may also contain lists (arrays, vectors, etc) of objects as members, allowing vast trees and forests of objects to be created and manipulated in a highly-controlled manner (the implementations being defined by the individual objects themselves).

Objects may also inherit members of existing objects to create new objects, vastly reducing the need for duplicate code, and therefore reducing the maintenance overhead. In addition, when an inefficiency comes to light, implementations can be modified to improve the efficiency without the risk of breaking code outside of the object.

In a nutshell, object oriented programming allows us to model real-world objects in as much or as little detail as we require, in ways that would have been difficult using procedural programming methods alone. It is not a magic bullet for every problem a developer might face. Selecting the right tool for the job should always be the first consideration, but when it is appropriate to use OOP and the underlying object designs are sound, the end result will be highly robust code that is considerably easier to maintain than the equivalent procedural code would have been.

Answer 2

Object-oriented programming can't be explained in one or two paragraphs. You may have to do quite a bit of reading, and practice, before you grasp the basic concepts - including the advantages of OOP.

The literal meaning is that much of your program is organized into structures called "classes". You define classes as templates, and then create objects based on those classes.

Answer 3

Object-oriented design is the process of planning a system on interacting objects to help solve a software issue. It is a useful process in software designing.

Answer 4

Lining yourself up with the object.