I am currently a first-year computer-science
student in the University of Toronto. First of all, I just want to say thank
you to all the people who helped in last year in the CSC108. Without any
previous programming experience, python has been a challenge for me compare to
other classes I am taking in this year. However, with all the help I got from
my professor and TAs, also my classmates and friends, I managed to get through
the CSC108 course easily.
Well, the first topic is Object-Oriented Programming, OOP for short. Python was
designed as an Object-Oriented Programming language. It is a model that
anything in it can be represented as a class or an object.
But why are we using such
method? Do they really useful? Yes, it does. The traditional way for coding is
the procedural approach. As programs are getting more and more complicated
nowadays, the difficultly level for the procedural approach becomes
dramatically high. In Object-Oriented Programming, instead of putting
logic as our priority, object itself is more important to us. “OOP puts objects
at the center of the process.” First we define the object we want to manipulate
with and then we figure the relationship between them and at last we work out
the logic.
The most important
feature that Object-Oriented Programming has is Inheritance. “Inheritance is
the process of making a new class based around a parent class.” It allows the
new class to inherit the feature of the parent class. Let’s give an example to
show you how this might be efficient and useful. If we want to use “car” as our
parent class, we could create a BMW class which inherited for the car class.
BMW class might have some features, but it is still a car and is more specific
than car class. Since the BMW has its own features such as a twin-turbo V-8
engine, rear-wheel drive, X-Drive or the I-Drive system. Such features make it
unique. If we want to make a class in the program to represent a BMW. We could
use inheritance of the OOP to inherit the methods and variables contained in
“car” so that the BMW could have the ability to “move forward”, “accelerate”,
or “brake”, and in BMW class we can store the additional orders we want the BMW
to do. As we are doing so, we don't have to retype all the line in one giant
class.
The lab we did on
this week is really a good example of the Object-Oriented Programming. We
created two classed first and then use it in the one last program, it saved a
lot of time by putting everything all together in one giant program.
So far, I am
comfortable with all the materials we have covered so far. Hopefully the first
assignment wouldn’t be such a big challenge.
