OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING FOR STRUCTURED PROCEDURAL PROGRAMMERS

Object technology is attracting attention in many areas, such as progr amming, databases, systems analysis and design, computer architecture, operating systems, and expert systems. The object-oriented programmin g approach promises to produce greater reusability, more extensibility , and easy maintainability Structured procedural programming, on the o ther hand, is well understood, well defined, and widely used for devel oping software. As a consequence, structured programmers may not yet b e familiar with the OOP approach. Using example programs, this tutoria l compares the two paradigms, showing some of the benefits of OOP, and provides concrete illustrations of such concepts as encapsulation, hi erarchical class inheritance, and polymorphism, which underlie the obj ect-oriented paradigm.