W3: What is Object-Oriented Programming?

When I first heard the term “object-oriented programming” last semester in CSC108, I was confused as to what it meant and how it differed from the programming we had mostly been using thus far.

Over the winter break, I promised myself that I would review classes and be clear on the meaning of this phrase as it obviously would be important in the future. Alas, my self-discipline has never been strong and when the spring semester began I already felt behind.

Thankfully, the first reading posted for CSC148 explained object-oriented programming extremely clearly, even for a beginner like me. As opposed to procedural programming that creates functions to operate on data, object-oriented programming makes it easier to manage complex computer systems by creating objects in which both data and functionality are contained.

At first, this seemed like a small difference, but now after more exposure to object-oriented programming, I’m surprised at how significant this difference is. By defining objects and the methods that operate on them, a program better correlates with how humans mentally think about the world. In class, when we practiced reading a paragraph and recognizing a class, its attributes and methods, I was pleased at how methodical it was to translate the words into the outline of a computer program.

The example in lecture (class Point) was a concrete data type where the professor defined how it was to be implemented. However, abstract data types (or ADTs) which do not specify implementation – only operations and what they do – are useful because they can be written once and then stored in libraries for the use of many programmers in many different ways.

In lecture, I felt like I was doing a semi-good job of keeping up with the theory behind object-oriented programming, but when it came around to tutorials I was obviously lacking in my application skills. On the second lab day, the end of the exercise was to try and find a solution to make class Queue run faster. Although my partner and I got the solution, I still had to go home and think about it before I was clear on how the solution worked.

Likewise, I’m feeling frustrated with understanding inheritance. In one of the readings, inheritance is described as “the evil forest”. More specifically, it is when an object or class is based off another object or class. Thus, it allows for the reuse of code. For example, in class the IntStack subclass inherits from the Stack class but has been modified so that only integers can be pushed onto an IntStack.

On the other hand, inheritance can be a dangerous thing if it becomes too complex. With inheritance, the computer always checks for code in the subclass first and thus it’s possible for some code to never be executed depending on where it is placed. In lecture, the professor demonstrated this using Exceptions.

Although I did as recommended and played around with the code that was uploaded on the CSC148 site, I am still confused with what “try” and “except” mean. There are many variables to fool with (the order of the code, commenting, uncommenting, and “raise”) that I’m feeling lost with what the code means. Tomorrow in class, I will have to ask the professor to reiterate and clarify his words regarding inheritance.

Overall, three weeks in, I’m not feeling as behind as I thought I would – and I suppose this is a good thing – but at the same time I’m certainly lazy and dragging my feet regarding solidifying this new knowledge. Although the new material is interesting, I have to remember to review my old notes as well (and perhaps even rewrite them in the Python 3 format to familiarize myself with it). I also feel like I've been only skim reading the last assigned readings, thus leaving holes in my understanding of certain concepts, especially Exceptions and composition. Before the course moves on, I have to thoroughly review these readings.