Introduction to object-oriented programming

Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) has been around for a couple of decades now, and most software developers are familiar with at least one OOP language, such as C or Java. The introduction of OOP represented a significant computer programming paradigm shift from the prevailing procedural programming technique. With OOP programming, the focus is on objects, and the focus of procedural programming is on procedures. For example, a procedural programming approach to a bicycle management information system would focus on the procedures that the system might perform. The OOP approach would focus on the bicycle and model it as an object. With the physical bicycle represented as an OOP object, we can define characteristics of the object and what behaviors can be taken with respect to the bicycle object.

In this section, we will cover the basics of OOP and use the bicycle object as a common reference. This section is subdivided as follows:

• Primary benefits of OOP
• Sample OOP class
• Instance variables
• The This reference