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Object-oriented Design
INTRODUCTION TO OBJECT-ORIENTED DESIGN PART 1 - ABSTRACTION
Up until now we've largely avoided discussing object-oriented design (OOD). This is a topic with a variety of methods put forward, and people tend to have strong views about it. But there are some useful general principles that can be stated, and we will present some of them in a series of articles.
The first point is perhaps the hardest one for newcomers to OOD to grasp. People will ask "How can I decide what classes my program should have in it?" The fundamental rule is that a class should represent some abstraction. For example, a Date class might represent calendar dates, an Integer class might deal with integers, and a Matrix class would represent mathematical matrices. So you need to ask "What kinds of entities does my application manipulate?"
Some examples of potential classes in different application areas would include:
GUI/Graphics - Line, Circle, Window, TextArea, Button, Point
Statistics - Mean, ChiSquare, Correlation
Geography - River, Country, Sea, Continent
Another way of saying it would be this. Instead of viewing an application as something that performs steps A, B, and C, that is, looking at the program in terms of its functions, instead ask what types of objects and data the application manipulates. Instead of taking a function-oriented approach, take an object-oriented one.
One obvious question with identifying potential classes is what level of granularity to apply. For example, in C++ an "int" is a primitive type, that represents an abstraction of mathematical integers. Should int be a class in the usual C++ sense? Probably not, because a class implies certain kinds of overhead in speed and space and in user comprehension. It's interesting to note that Java(tm), a newer object-oriented language, also has int, but additionally supports a...
INTRODUCTION TO OBJECT-ORIENTED DESIGN PART 1 - ABSTRACTION
Up until now we've largely avoided discussing object-oriented design (OOD). This is a topic with a variety of methods put forward, and people tend to have strong views about it. But there are some useful general principles that can be stated, and we will present some of them in a series of articles.
The first point is perhaps the hardest one for newcomers to OOD to grasp. People will ask "How can I decide what classes my program should have in it?" The fundamental rule is that a class should represent some abstraction. For example, a Date class might represent calendar dates, an Integer class might deal with integers, and a Matrix class would represent mathematical matrices. So you need to ask "What kinds of entities does my application manipulate?"
Some examples of potential classes in different application areas would include:
GUI/Graphics - Line, Circle, Window, TextArea, Button, Point
Statistics - Mean, ChiSquare, Correlation
Geography - River, Country, Sea, Continent
Another way of saying it would be this. Instead of viewing an application as something that performs steps A, B, and C, that is, looking at the program in terms of its functions, instead ask what types of objects and data the application manipulates. Instead of taking a function-oriented approach, take an object-oriented one.
One obvious question with identifying potential classes is what level of granularity to apply. For example, in C++ an "int" is a primitive type, that represents an abstraction of mathematical integers. Should int be a class in the usual C++ sense? Probably not, because a class implies certain kinds of overhead in speed and space and in user comprehension. It's interesting to note that Java(tm), a newer object-oriented language, also has int, but additionally supports a...