Programming

Since I am a bad student (always sleep in class), I don't quite remember how my professor talked about the differences between Object-oriented programming and Structured (or procedual) programming.

What I understand is it:

Structured programming combines a series interacting functions without consider the data, in other words, the data is considered a passive quantity to be acted upon by constrol structures and functions.

The Object-oriented programming uses data abstraction, inheritance, and dynamic binding to construct programs.


Actually when people start studying C++, they will learn Input/Output, if, while loop, ect., right? I think those are kind of structured programming. So I guess the differences between C and C++ must be somewhere in how to use Class, Struct, or Union??

I admit I don't know how C exactly works (Our school doesn't teach C). And I don't know why people always says "C isn't an object-oriented" (I shouldn't sleep in class anymore...........let's take it to the library ). So, could someone explain it to me a little bit?

Thanx.

Asleep in your lessons? You deserve to fail!

But this once I will give you a clue...

Firstly, Object Orientation is a design philosophy which is not necessarily associated with a specific language. It is, if you will, a way of thinking about your programming problems and how to solve them.

In my experience my better designs have tended towards OO anyway. The four main principles behind OO are: abstraction,encapsulation, inheritance and polymorphism.

It is possible to take a language like C or Pascal and implement a solution with some or all of those properties. The languages do not lend themselves to that use and you would have to work harder programmatically.

Languages like C++ and Java are intended to be used within an OO framework and therefore support features for OO. Although these languages can be used in such a way that will break OO principles.

To say 'C isn't object orientated' is sort of correct, but misses the point somewhat. It is more accurate to say 'C does not support object orientated features'.

Ultimately you will still need to encode a sequence of tasks for the computer to execute Procedural Programming and OO are just 2 different ways of approaching that problem and both have their merits and disadvantages.

Remember , its not the methodology which gives success; its the thinking (or design) and the discipline of the designer/programmer which does. (Plus thorough testing!)

My advice to you, now, is to go off and read up on this stuff; drink plenty of coffee; practice your design and programming!

MBB

Just building on to what mbb said...

The way I always thought of it is that procedural programming contains the instructions to do everything you want to do, contained within your one program. If there's something really basic that you want to do in every program you create, you have to include the code again and again and again in each program you create.

Object-oriented programming allows you to create a separate file - an object - with the code necessary to do some basic task. Each program you create in the future can call that object .. you don't even need to know what the code looks like inside the object anymore. You just need to know what data it accepts and what data it will return to you.

This allows joe blow to create an object and share it with all his friends as long as he tells them what kind of data the object expects and what kind of data the object will return.

Take a look at this page.

Thank you!

To add to what mbb said, it is good for you to know this: C++ is only in a 30% object-oriented supportive, since it is a hubrid language and superset of C.
Try to find about C++ in :www.chris-lott.org/resources/cstyle or
www.possibility.com/Cpp/CppCodingStandard.html
also there are the news groups: comp.lang.C++ and comp.lang.c++.moderate

A warning, it will be difficult for you to learn C++ without first, at least program in C. However, if you have the tools, books and the will to try you wan't regret it.

Have fun!

One little question (i don't understand)
if 'C++' is more powerful, more flexible then 'C',
why some people still use C - language?
What is it: legacy interface or time-critical tasks?

Becuase well written C compiles into some of the fastest binaries around.