In object-oriented programming, the term “oops” stands for “object-oriented programming and design.” OOPS concepts are essential to understand the design of a program. These concepts include:
- Class: A class defines the characteristics and behavior of a group of objects. It specifies the data that the objects will contain (attributes or instance variables) and the operations that the objects will be able to perform (methods or functions).
- Object: An object is an instance of a class. It has its own state (data) and behavior (methods).
- Method: A method is a function that is defined inside a class and is used to perform a specific action or task. Methods are called on an object, and they can access and modify the data stored in the object.
- Encapsulation: Encapsulation refers to the idea of bundling data and methods that operate on that data within one unit, or object. For example, in Python, you might have a “Person” class that contains data attributes such as name and age, as well as methods for setting and getting those attributes.
- Inheritance: Inheritance allows a class to inherit characteristics from a parent class. This can save time and improve code reuse. For example, you might have a “Student” class that inherits from a “Person” class, which means it will have all the attributes and methods of the “Person” class, as well as any additional attributes and methods defined in the “Student” class.
- Polymorphism: Polymorphism allows you to use the same method name to perform different actions, depending on the context. For example, you might have a “Shape” class with a method called “area,” which calculates the area of a shape. Depending on the specific shape, the “area” method might need to use a different formula to calculate the area.
- Abstraction: Abstraction refers to the idea of exposing only the necessary information to the user, while hiding the implementation details. For example, you might have a “Database” class with a method called “query,” which performs a database query. The user of the “Database” class does not need to know how the query is implemented, only that it returns the desired data.
