Cracking the Code: Why OOP Matters

Three major innovations in programming have been devised to cope with the problem of complexity. They are:

1. Object Oriented Programming

2. The Unified Modeling Language

3. Improved Software development processes

Object Oriented Programming (OOP)

In this approach instead of viewing a program as a series of steps to be carried out, it views it as a group of objects that have certain properties and can take certain actions.

Ther Unified Modeling Language

The UML is a graphical language consisting of many kinds of diagrams. It helps program analysts figures out what a program should do, and helps programmers design and understand how a program works.

Procedural Languages

C, Pascal, FORTAN, and similar languages are procedural languages. That is each statement in the language tells the computer to do something. A program in a procedural language is a list of instructions.

Arrangement of data and functions in a procedural program

This large number of connections causes problems in several ways. First, it makes a program structure difficult to conceptualize. Second, it makes the program difficult to modify. A change in made in a global data item may necessitate rewriting all the functions that access that item.

The fundamental idea behind object-oriented languages is to combine into a single unit both data and functions that operate on that data. Such unit is called an object.