Programming iOS 6, 3rd Edition

Messages and Methods

Nothing in a computer program happens unless it is instructed to happen. In a C program, all code belongs to a function and doesn’t run unless that function is called. In an object-based program, all code belongs to an object, and doesn’t run unless that object is told to run that code. All the action in an object-based program happens because an object was told to act. What does it mean to tell an object something?

An object, in object-based programming, has a well-defined set of abilities — things it knows how to do. For example, imagine an object that is to represent a dog. We can design a highly simplified, schematic dog that knows how to do an extremely limited range of things: eat, come for a walk, bark, sit, lie down, sleep. The purpose of these abilities is so that the object can be told, as appropriate, to exercise them. So, again, we can imagine our schematic dog, rather like some child’s toy robot, responding to simple commands: Eat! Come for a walk! Bark!

In object-based programming, a command directed to an object is called a message. To make the dog object eat, we send the eat message to the dog object. This mechanism of message sending is the basis of all activity in the program. The program consists entirely of objects, so its activity consists entirely of objects sending messages to one another.

For objects to send messages to one another, objects must know about one another in some appropriate way at some appropriate time. Ensuring such mutual ...