Terminology
Every piece of data stored in a program is an object. Each object has an identity, a type, and a value.
For example, when you write a = 42, an integer object is created with the value of 42. You can view the identity of an object as a pointer to its location in memory. In this example, a is a name that refers to this specific location.
The type of an object (which is itself a special kind of object) describes the internal representation of the object as well as the methods and operations that it supports. When an object of a particular type is created, that object is sometimes called an instance of that type (although an instance of a type should not be confused with an instance of a user-defined class). After an object is created, ...
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