Computer Science Illuminated, 7th Edition

9.1 Object-Oriented Methodology

We cover top-down design first because it more closely mirrors the way humans solve problems. As you saw earlier in this book, a top-down solution produces a hierarchy of tasks. Each task or named action operates on the data passed to it through its parameter list to produce the desired output. The tasks are the focus of a top-down design. Object-oriented design, by contrast, is a problem-solving methodology that produces a solution to a problem in terms of self-contained entities called objects, which are composed of both data and operations that manipulate the data. Object-oriented design focuses on the objects and their interactions within a problem. Once all of the objects within the problem are collected ...