Introduction

A signature aspect of object-oriented languages is (as you might expect from the name), the existence of objects within the language. In this chapter, we take a deep look at objects, exploring why they were created, what they are at both a theoretical and practical level, and how they are used.

Key Terms

Some key terms to learn in this chapter are:

• Encapsulation

• Information Hiding

• Message Passing

• State

• Class

• Object

• Field

• Method

• Constructor

• Parameterless Constructor

• Property

• Public

• Private

• Static

To begin, we’ll examine the term encapsulation.