Concepts of object-oriented programming

The development of computer technology has entailed new approaches in programming. The programming style has completely changed, it consists in mapping the physical objects of the real world to the software environment. It's about the concept of object-oriented programming (OOP), the basis of which is the concept of object. Its essence lies in the fact that the object combines the data structures and the methods of processing that are characteristic only for it. Combining data and the processing methods inherent in them in one object is called encapsulation and is one of the most important principles of OOP.

Another fundamental concept of object-oriented programming is the class. A class is a template from which a particular program object can be created, it describes the properties and methods that determine the behavior of objects of this class. In OOP, the class is an abstract data type and is the mechanism for creating objects. The definition of an object as an instance of the class will create this object physically, i.e. allocates an object in memory.

The next most important concepts of object-oriented programming are inheritance and polymorphism. Inheritance involves creating new classes based on existing classes and allowing the child class to inherit all properties of the parent class. Polymorphism means that the generated objects have information about which methods they should use, depending on where the inheritance chains are located.

Another fundamental concept of object-oriented programming is modularity, - objects contain a complete definition of their characteristics, no definitions of methods and properties of the object should be located outside of it, this makes it possible to freely copy and insert one object into other objects.

The concepts of object-oriented programming have penetrated many procedural programming languages. For example, the integrated programming system Pascal, starting with version 5,5, includes a special library of PLO Turbo Vision.

Since the mid-90's. many object-oriented languages are implemented as visual programming systems. Such systems have an interface that allows you to see the graphic objects for which it is written when you compose the text of the program. A distinctive feature of these systems is the availability in them of the development environment of programs from ready-made "building blocks" that allow creating the interface part of the software product in an interactive mode, practically without writing program operations. The system takes on a significant part of the work on computer management, which makes it possible in simple cases to dispense with special knowledge about the details of its operation. She herself writes a significant part of the text of the program: descriptions of objects, procedure headings and much more. The programmer can only enter the necessary lines, which determine the individual behavior of the program, which the system is not able to predict. But even in these cases, the system itself indicates the location for placing such lines.

Object-oriented systems of visual design include: Visual Basic, Delphi, Visual C++. This is the highest level of programming system.