Professional C++, 3rd Edition

Chapter 5Designing with Objects

WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• What object-oriented programming design is
• How you can define relationships between different objects
• The importance of abstraction and how to use it in your designs

Now that you have developed an appreciation for good software design from Chapter 4, it’s time to pair the notion of objects with the concept of good design. The difference between programmers who use objects in their code and those who truly grasp object-oriented programming comes down to the way their objects relate to each other and to the overall design of the program.

This chapter begins with a very brief description of procedural programming (C-style), followed by a detailed discussion of object-oriented programming (OOP). Even if you’ve been using objects for years, you will want to read this chapter for some new ideas regarding how to think about objects. A discussion of the different kinds of relationships between objects includes pitfalls programmers often succumb to when building an object-oriented program. You will also learn how the principal of abstraction relates to objects.

When thinking about procedural programming or object-oriented programming, the most important point to remember is that they just represent different ways of reasoning about what’s going on in your program. Too often, programmers get bogged down in the syntax and jargon of OOP before they adequately understand what an object is. This chapter is light on code and heavy ...