HACC Object Oriented Concepts Discussion – Description
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1. This week we are learning about Object Oriented Design (OOD) concepts and for this post we will be focusing on encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism, and abstraction.
Encapsulation – This part of an object is important since it allows you to hide parts of the object that are private in that they are only used as a part of that instance from the external or public parts of the object that are accessible by other objects.
Inheritance – This part of OOD is very important since inheritance allows attributes and methods to be shared among classes in a hierarchical manner. This helps to ensure you have efficient code, reusable code, and that it is loosely coupled to where you don’t have dependent hard-coded portions that are difficult to change.
Polymorphism – This concept is basically how methods “morph” or behave differently when used in different classes. This is an important feature of an object oriented language since it would be used for operations performed by class objects and would be something that can be inherited from a parent class. This is also important since encapsulation would allow an implementation of an object without affecting the application as a whole where a method is used elsewhere. This is also a part of abstraction since you can focus on what the object is and how it operates.
Abstraction – This is basically the concept of focusing on individual objects and what they do before moving on to deciding how to implement the objects. This is a common feature of OO languages and a very important part of designing your system since you can focus on instances of classes and how they relate to other classes without going into all the details.
All of these concepts are intertwined in Object Oriented Design and work together to help make a powerful, efficient program. Implementing classes or objects involves all of these aspects.
2. Encapsulation: Encapsulation is the process of bundling data (attributes) and the methods (functions) that manipulate that data within a single unit called an object. It allows for data hiding and provides a way to control access to the internal state of an object. Encapsulation helps in achieving data integrity, code organization, and modularity.
Inheritance: Inheritance is a mechanism that allows a class to inherit the properties and behaviors (methods and attributes) of another class. The class that inherits is called the derived class or subclass, and the class being inherited from is called the base class or superclass. Inheritance promotes code reuse, extensibility, and the concept of the “is-a” relationship.
Polymorphism: Polymorphism allows objects of different classes to be treated as objects of a common superclass. It refers to the ability of an object to take on many forms and exhibit different behaviors based on its context. Polymorphism allows for code flexibility, modularity, and abstraction.
Abstraction: Abstraction refers to the process of simplifying complex systems by focusing on essential features and ignoring irrelevant details. In object-oriented design, abstraction involves defining a class with only the necessary attributes and behaviors to represent a concept or entity. It helps in managing complexity, improving code maintainability, and providing a clear interface for interacting with objects.
These concepts are important in object-oriented modeling because they promote modular design, code reusability, flexibility, and scalability. They allow for the creation of well-structured and maintainable software systems.
The relation of these concepts such as encapsulation is facilitated by abstraction, as it involves hiding unnecessary details and exposing only the essential attributes and methods. Inheritance allows for code reusability by creating relationships through classes. Which in turn, polymorphism relies on inheritance, as it enables objects of different classes to be treated uniformly through a common superclass or interface.
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