Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design

The Object-Oriented Paradigm

The object-oriented paradigm is centered on the concept of the object. Everything is focused on objects. I write code organized around objects, not functions.

What is an object? Objects have traditionally been defined as data with methods (the object-oriented term for functions). Unfortunately, this is a very limiting way of looking at objects. I will look at a better definition of objects shortly (and again in Chapter 8, “Expanding Our Horizons”). When I talk about the data of an object, these can be simple things like numbers and character strings, or they can be other objects.

The advantage of using objects is that I can define things that are responsible for themselves. (See Table 1-2.) Objects inherently know ...