Basics of OO Design

• Chapter 4 is good, but is mostly about program design considerations at a higher level
• But he introduces abstraction
  • Focusing on the correct level of detail at any place in the problem.
  • Think about streams
    • We recently got glimpse of the operators.
    • They somehow convert the datatype to something that the stream can handle.
    • We built upon the character abstraction.
    • What do you suppose cout << 3.00 does?
  • Another example, which we know better is our AbilityT class
    • The user has no idea about all of the static casts going on below the hood.
  • He tells us that abstraction
    • Allows a programmer to build a element so that others can use them without knowing the underlying design.
    • He has a great example on page 143.
  • He also introduces code reuse.
    • This is valid, but perhaps not germane to our discussion.
    • I encourage you to read this sections.
  • The rest of chapter 4 is more software engineering than we need.