What Is Object Oriented Programming About?

14 May 2025 85 Views Share

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For a computer science student, studying about the many programming concepts is vital. Throughout their lectures, they often encounter object oriented programming. This concept is pivotal to understanding modern computing, and is central to many popular languages like Java and Python. Thus, this blog aims to shed some light on what is OOP and its key concepts. 

Before we explore OOP concepts, it is first important to understand a programming paradigm. The next section explains this in detail.

What Is a Programming Paradigm?

To solve a problem, one needs to choose the right logic or concepts. Over the years, programming has become a discipline in itself. While the idea and the basic concepts remain the same, various styles or ‘paradigms' have popped up. In the context of programming, a paradigm is an approach or way of programming based on a set of principles. Each one follows a bunch of concepts that make it best for solving a specific type of problems.

Some of the most popular programming paradigms are presented in the table below:

The evolution of paradigms has made programming styles much more diverse. Paradigms provide structure to our code, which improves its readability and makes it easier to maintain. One such paradigm is the object-based programming paradigm. The following section discusses its core concepts and history.

What Is Object-Oriented Programming?

This paradigm is very popular, which organizes code blocks into the form of an object, rather than functions or procedures. It is common for students to struggle with this concept. They might prefer taking computer science assignment help to get their work done quickly.  However, it remains crucial to discuss still. So, before we delve into what OOP is, its many features, and use cases, let us first discuss its history.

History of Object-Oriented Paradigm

• Back in the 1960, the programming language Simula introduced classes and objects. Do you know? Simula was developed by two programmers, Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard .
• Another significant milestone was in the 1970s. Alan Kay, Dan Ingalls and Adele Goldberg developed SmallTalk which popularized OOP in computer science.
• It was by the late 1980s, when languages like Java and C++ had emerged. They solidified the position of object-oriented programming which had become the dominant paradigm in the 1990s. Many languages of that era were multi-paradigm but favoured OOP.

Real-World Analogy

The easiest way to understand object-oriented programming is through a real-world analogy. Before that, one should know the core components. The two components of OOP are objects and classes. The class can be considered to be the blueprint of a house, and the house itself is an object. These are the most important features of object oriented programming.

• Class: The class defines the structure or behaviour of a specific type of object.
• Object: This is the concrete or singular instance of a class.

The paradigm is used heavily in the real world for many reasons that will be discussed further in the blog. Beyond class and object, there are four main OOP concepts, which the next section targets.

The 4 Pillars of Object Oriented Programming

There are some key concepts in Object-Oriented Programming, often called the 4 pillars of object oriented programming. The section below discusses these briefly and presents pseudo-code examples.

Abstraction

When asked what are the key principles of object-oriented programming, this is one of the most important. Abstraction refers to hiding complicated logical implementations.

• Instead, it focuses on presenting only essential information to the user.
• Abstraction simplifies the interaction between the user and the system.

They do not have to know the program's internal workings. Here's an example:

The abstract class Vehicle contains the method move. The subclass Car extends the Vehicle class, but does not require it to initialize the move method,. hiding the complexity. The implementation is straightforward. The return statement from the move method is the output.

Encapsulation:

It refers to bundling data and methods into a singular unit, like a class. Encapsulation makes our code more secure by not allowing direct access to the data. It protects the data from external modification and ensures its integrity. An example of it is as follows:

BankAccount class contains a private variable balance, which is first initialized using an init method .

• A deposit method that takes the deposit amount as the parameter is created.
• It contains a condition that will add to balance only if the input amount 0.
• There is a getBalance method that returns the balance of any instance of this class.

In its implementation, the user cannot directly access the balance variable. But they can interact with the methods, which allow them to make the necessary changes. The balance variable is encapsulated within the BankAccount class. This was an object oriented programming example explaining encapsulation.

Inheritance

Inheritance is one of the most valuable feature out of the OOP concepts. It refers to creating subclasses that inherit attributes and behavior from a parent class, which is also known as the super class. Writing a program to present inheritance might seem hard, but our assignment writing services not only cater to such problems, but any problem you might have. The example below by our experts might help you understand.

The example above presents the Dog child class, which extends the Animal parent class.The Dog class inherits the speak() method from the parent class.

There are many types of inheritance: single, multiple, multilevel, hierarchical, and hybrid.

Polymorphism

Polymorphism means many forms. It treats objects of different classes as objects of a common type. It enables a single interface to handle many actions based on a specific object's type, making code more flexible and extensible.

In the above code example, we pass the Bird and Dog instances of the same Animal class to the playSound function. This is an example of function overriding, one of many polymorphism types.

Popular Object-Oriented Programming Languages

We looked at some vital features of object oriented programming (OOP). Since OOP is a very popular paradigm, many languages can be used to write code. The image below presents some of these languages.

Some popular object oriented programming languages are:

Java 

It is no surprise that Java is a high-level programming language with many uses. It is a very popular choice to build enterprise applications. It has the following features:

• General Purpose
• Memory Safe
• Write Once Read Anywhere
• Object-Oriented

A commonly asked question by many students is that who created Java and where? It was none other than James Gosling at Sun Microsystems. He wanted to create a platform-independent language. This was made possible in Java using the Java Virtual Machine.. .

Python

What is the most popular programming language for data science, machine learning and web development? It is none other than Python. It is a high-level language that targets code readability, and has the following features:

• FOSS- Free and Open-source software
• Easy syntax
• Interpreted and portable
• Large community
• Multi-paradigm

Python was created by Guido Van Rossum, and is popular for many reasons, mainly due to the ease of learning and extensive libraries. It has been quite helpful in building many useful tools. Tools like video transcoders, web scraping, and even text analysis tools like Plagiarism Checker UK.

C++

Do you know that Windows applications are developed on C++? It is a very efficient, flexible and hardware-friendly language. Some of its features are:

• Low-Level Control
• Standard Template Library
• Wide application
• High Performance
• Cross-platform
• A well-known fact is that this general-purpose, versatile programming language was created by Bjarne Stroustrup.

Ruby 

What makes this language so special? Ruby was developed by Yukihiro Matsumoto to be an open-source language for web development. It is elegant, simple and readable. Here are some of its core features:

• Dynamically Typed
• Interpreted
• High-level
• Open-source

Beyond web development, it is also used for automation and creating command-line tools. For students curious about its features, they include web scraping, DevOps and data processing.

JavaScript

Currently, JavaScript is the backbone of the Internet. It was created by Brendan Eich in 1995. JavaScript creates interactive web pages using frameworks like React and Angular. Some features that make it popular are:

• Dynamically Typed
• Multi-paradigm
• Platform independent
• Asynchronous

These features make JavaScript very popular for building web applications. Moreover, its multi-paradigm approach makes it quite flexible and versatile.

C#

It is a powerful object-oriented programming language developed by Microsoft. It runs on the .NET framework. C# has a wide application in web, games and app development. Some features make it exceptional for modern programming. The points below present some of them:

• Statically but strongly typed
• Cross-platform
• LINQ (Language Integrated Query) is particularly useful for data manipulation and asynchronous programming

Since C# is part of the .NET ecosystem, people can utilize a large library of tools and classes. C# is particularly important for game development because of the Unity Game Engine.

Swift

It is a powerful and intuitive programming language created by Apple. Swift is easy to learn, secure and efficient. Developers of any skill level can pick up Swift and start building applications. Here are some of its standard features:

• Safety
• Performance
• Expressive
• Interoperability
• Ease of Learning
• Open Source

This language is developer-friendly and has its own package manager. Moreover, since it was developed by Apple, it provides a smooth development experience, especially for all Apple products.

Kotlin

The Kotlin programming language is a modern language designed to work alongside Java. JetBrains in 2016 developed Kotlin with help of open-source programmers. Here are some features that differentiate it from Java:

• Achieves null safety through the type system
• Concise Syntax
• Can extend classes with new functionality without inheritance
• Provides co-routines for asynchronous programming, which are lighter on memory than threads

Google prefers and supports Kotlin for developing Android applications. Interestingly, before the development of Kotlin, Java was the go-to language for Android apps.

This table will provide students programming assignment help for their next project.

The table presented the reasons why these languages are object-oriented. Although we have discussed about the many features of object-oriented programming and languages, we have yet to talk about its advantages. Therefore, the section below presents the many advantages of OOP concepts.

Advantages of Object Oriented Programming

There are some advantages that makes many organizations prefer OOP. The section below explains them in detail.

The table above listed some pivotal advantages of object oriented programming, which give it an edge against the other paradigms. However, it is important to note that these only exist for some specific use cases. They are mentioned in the section below.

Use Cases of Object Oriented Programming

There are some specific use cases where OOP is advantageous. The table below highlights some of these use cases.

This table showcases the use cases and object-oriented programming examples. However, there are some limitations..

Limitations of Object Oriented Programming

There are two sides to every single coin. Therefore, OOP concepts have their limitations as well. The points below shed some light on the limitations of the object-oriented paradigm.

• Increases Complexity: OOP is useful for large- scale software, but is overkill for small problems. Creating objects and classes is not always required for programs that can be solved through a procedural language.
• Steep Learning Curve: Object oriented programming concepts can be difficult, especially for beginners. It takes some level of experience to understand and design class hierarchies.
• Memory Issues: Adhering to OOP concepts, creating and allocating objects increases memory and performance overhead.
• Over-engineered: Not all software need to be developed with a "design to reuse" mentality. It can cause bloated software and unnecessary complications in code. It also reduces the readability of code.

These points above highlight the few limitations of object oriented programming. They occur mainly due to not adhering to the use cases mentioned in the above section. Moreover, programming in this paradigm may save time, but requires an experienced programmer.

How Our Experts Help You Clear Your OOP Concepts

Object oriented programming concepts are a popular programming paradigm. A paradigm is the style in which one can write code. This blog taught the various programming styles and their evolution.We saw variou object-oriented programming examples after discussing the history and the four main pillars of object-based coding. Moreover, we read about the various programming languages that adhere to OOP. Since our experts at Instant Assignment Help have spent years studying many programming languages, they know how crucial it is for students to know these concepts. One of the main motive behind this blog was to educate students about its importance and various concepts.

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