How does Object Oriented Programming work? What does it do and how is it effective?
In: Technology
The idea is to take the structure of the real-world and use that to define the structure of the software. If I’m making an airplane simulation, my program is divided up like the plane’s parts are divided up. It compartmentalizes change, an airline might switch to an alternative engine, but then I just replace my Rolls Royce Engine object with a new GE Engine object. This sort of change is a lot more likely that replacing all the electrical circuits, so it’s a better modularization choice than having all the electrical modeling in one Electrical object.
It’s most effective when the analogy is strong, like the airplane case above. It’s much less convincing when all the “objects” are made up for the software. It turns out most things we do in software today have been done in reality for decades, so it does work most of the time, but nothing’s perfect in software.
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