Computer Science Illuminated, 7th Edition

9.5 Functionality of Object-Oriented Languages

As you might guess from the earlier discussion of object-oriented design, the basic construct in an object-oriented language is the class. In addition to looking at the class construct in this section, we examine the three essential ingredients in an object-oriented language: encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism. These ingredients foster reuse, thereby reducing the cost of building and maintaining software.

Encapsulation

In Chapter 7, we talked about important threads running through the discussion of problem solving. Two of these threads were information hiding and abstraction. Recall that information hiding is the practice of hiding the details of a module with the goal of controlling ...