December 2009
Intermediate to advanced
1170 pages
28h 4m
English
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Chapter 8. Designing Classes
CHAPTER GOALS
To learn how to choose appropriate classes for a given problem
To understand the concepts of cohesion and coupling
To minimize the use of side effects
To document the responsibilities of methods and their callers with preconditions and postconditions
To understand static methods and variables
To understand the scope rules for local variables and instance variables
To learn about packages
T To learn about unit testing frameworks
In this chapter you will learn more about designing classes. First, we will discuss the process of discovering classes and declaring methods. Next, we will discuss how the concepts of pre- and postconditions enable you to specify, implement, and invoke methods correctly. You will also learn about several more technical issues, such as static methods and variables. Finally, you will see how to use packages to organize your classes.
Discovering Classes
You have used a good number of classes in the preceding chapters and probably designed a few classes yourself as part of your programming assignments. Designing a class can be a challenge—it is not always easy to tell how to start or whether the result is of good quality.
What makes a good class? Most importantly, a class should represent a single conceptfrom a problem domain. Some of the classes that you have seen represent concepts from mathematics:
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Note
A class should represent a single concept from a problem domain, such as business, science, or mathematics. ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.