Frequently Asked Questions

Question: What is OOP? (Object Oriented Programming)

Answer:

Ok. Here's how may old Java teacher explained it:
If you think about it everything in the world is an object. So instead of programming with mathematical equations and jumps every which way, why not structure our code into logical encapsulations. These are called classes. In nature a class might be birds. Now as you know there are many different types of birds.
A peacock is a bird. A parrot is a bird, an eagle and so on... So what do all these things have in common? Well they all have feathers, beaks, and wings. This is called Inheritence. In OOP classes can inherit the traits of a base class. (we would call it a super class in Java) So you see a penguin would inherit wings, feather, and a beak from the bird class. In programming this might be similar to inheriting common functions.
Say you have a bunch of slightly different programs that still use some of the same functions. You could make a class to encapsulate those functions and those same traits will be available to all the off-spring of that class. So you see a penguin may inherit all these traits which keeps us from having to recode the attributes everytime we want a different kind of bird. Say we wanted an eagle. Well eagles can fly while penguins can swim, but they are both birds. So I can just use the bird class to create a new class called eagle only adding the fact that eagles can fly.

As you can see you sing these same features over again can drastically improve development time. Before OOP you might have had to retype the same basic program a hundred times then just typing what has changed about it. Now I'm bet your wondering what an object is?

Well an object is a specific implementation of that class. A class is a blueprint for an object, and the object is the actual thing. That is about as far as I can go into detail right now with out you having any real experience in programming.

Right now you just need to start writing code. Sooner or later you will really come to see how powerful and adaptable objects are.

Ok lala this is just a c&p from Wikipedia. I suppose that's not terrible, but I want these to be more then just Wiki quotes. Wiki quotes are a little bit better then straight definitions. You would want to explain what Computer Programming means to someone who doesn't understand it. Same for the Copy&Paster one. We pretty much know that c&p is a derogatory name around the programming sections. So you might want to add how no to be a copy and paster... things like that.

I need to hold these to a certain level of standard. So this will not be included. I hope people don't feel I'm being to harsh. If you do just say something.