Chapter 9. Study Guide

Inevitably, software systems' ever-increasing size and complexity and advances in hardware will require a new software development paradigm. But for now, with some specialized exceptions, the object-oriented approach is the best overall software development model. CS 1410 examines three phases of object-oriented software development: analysis (OOA), design (OOD), and programming (OOP).

Software developers identify objects in the problem domain (i.e., the "real world") and abstract them into classes during the analysis phase. During the design phase, developers refine the class by adding, removing, or updating the class's attributes and operations. They also add implementation classes, classes that don't exist in the problem domain but are necessary for a computer program, during the design phase. Finally, the developers implement the classes and create programs in the implementation or programming phase. The classes form a consistent and cohesive "vocabulary" used throughout the development process.

Most of our effort in CS 1410 centers on object-oriented programming (OOP).

Object-Oriented Concepts

The object-oriented paradigm requires three characteristics or concepts:

Key Examples

Students often struggle with using objects. Three key examples target different conceptual challenges:

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