Implementation Patterns

Chapter 5. Class

The idea of classes goes back long before Plato. The platonic solids were classes, instances of which could be seen in the world. The platonic sphere was absolutely perfect but insubstantial. The spheres around us we could touch, but they were all imperfect in some way.

Object-oriented programming picked up on this idea by way of later western philosophers, dividing programs into classes, which are general descriptions of a whole set of similar things, and objects, which are the things themselves.

Classes are important for communication because they describe, potentially, many specific things. Class-level patterns have the largest span of any of the implementation patterns. Design patterns, by contrast, generally talk about ...