Java For Dummies, 6th Edition

Chapter 7

Thinking in Terms of Classes and Objects

In This Chapter

Thinking like a real object-oriented programmer

Passing values to and from methods

Hiding details in your object-oriented code

As a computer book author, I’ve been told this over and over again — I shouldn’t expect people to read sections and chapters in their logical order. People jump around, picking what they need and skipping what they don’t feel like reading. With that in mind, I realize that you may have skipped Chapter 1. If that’s the case, please don’t feel guilty. You can compensate in just 60 seconds by reading the following information culled from Chapter 1:

Because Java is an object-oriented programming language, your primary goal is to describe classes and objects. A class is the idea behind a certain kind of thing. An object is a concrete instance of a class. The programmer defines a class, and from the class definition, the computer makes individual objects.

Of course, you can certainly choose to skip over the 60-second summary paragraph. If that’s the case, you may want to recoup some of your losses. You can do that by reading the following two-word summary of Chapter 1:

Classes; objects.

Defining ...