Reviews : Java Books :
Beginning Java Objects : Chapters 2 and 3

Buy this book Title: Beginning Java Objects ISBN: 1861004176 US Price: $ 39.99 Canadian Price: C$ 59.95 UK Price: £ 28.99 Publication Date: November 2000 Pages: 800 © Wrox Press Limited, US and UK.

Objects are the fundamental building blocks of an object-oriented (OO) system. Just as abstraction involves producing a model of the real world as we discussed in Chapter 2, objects are 'mini abstractions' of various real-world components.

In this chapter, you will learn:

• What makes up a software object.
• How we use classes to specify an object's data and behavior.
• How we create objects based on a class definition.
• How objects keep track of one another.

What Is an Object?

"(1) Something material that may be perceived by the senses; (2) something mental or physical toward which thought, feeling, or action is directed."

• The students who attend classes
• The professors who teach them
• The classrooms in which class meetings take place
• The furniture in these classrooms
• The buildings in which the classrooms are located
• The textbooks students use

Now, let's focus on the second half of the definition, particularly on the phrase 'something mental ... toward which thought, feeling, or action is directed'. There are a great many conceptual objects that play important roles in an academic setting; some of these are:

• The courses that students attend
• The departments that faculty works for
• The degrees that students receive

"A (software) object is a software construct that bundles together data (state) and functions (behavior) which, taken together, represent an abstraction of a 'real-world' (physical or conceptual) object."

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