Object-Oriented Programming: Basic Concepts

Abstract

Object-oriented design and object-oriented programming are deemed by some the salvation of the programming world. With the complexity of hardware increases vastly diminishing the increases in complexity of software, this salvation promises highly reusable code. Among other advantages, this would eliminate "recreating the wheel" each time a program is written, making great time savings for programmers. Object-oriented programming environments have been around for since the early 1960's, but have only lately become an influence on the software development community. My work at I/NET Incorporated of Kalamazoo, Michigan these past three months allowed me to explore an object-oriented environment named Actor. I/NET purchased the product in order to ascertain whether object-oriented design and programming could increase their software productivity. My job was to program an in-house piece of software in the Microsoft Windows environment. My experience with object-oriented programming, design, and the concepts associated with each was limited to several magazine articles before I started at I/NET. I feel comfortable enough now with the concepts of object-oriented programming that I know that returning to structured or procedural programming would be a return to the wheel. This paper is designed to influence people the way I have been influenced: try object-oriented programming. you may not want to come back. The discussion places heavy emphasis on the object-oriented concepts and benefits.