Procedural and OOP (Object Oriented Programming)

      Procedural programming deals with strictly solving problems step by step in a specific way, or procedure.  “An example of good procedural style is a square root function.” (Stroustrup, 1988, pg. 11 9^th paragraph)

                Double-sqrt(double arg)

                // the code for calculating sq root

                Void some_function()

                Double root2-sqrt(2)

To summarize Stroustrup’s definition, you find the best possible algorithms based on which procedures you want.

                 

      Object Oriented Programming (OOP) seems to be amazing when writing code.  In my opinion it seems to be on its own level above the rest.  With OOP you could literally create any real life scenario in your program.  The way it works is by first defining a class (which is like a blueprint of what an object will be like).  From the class you can then create objects from those classes and actually fine tune them so they are unique and accurately represent what you are visioning.  An example of OOP could be a card game.  You first start by creating a card class you could then create each individual card (there are multiple ways of accomplishing this, one might be creating two subclasses of value and suite).  OOP also allows you to almost effortlessly shuffle and deal those cards as well.

                I’m pretty sure it’s obvious that I prefer OOP over procedural programming based on the above text.  I am still very new to programming so I may think differently as I experience each language work on various tasks, but for now OOP just seems like a no-brainer.  Although I prefer OOP, I do think there are situations in which procedural programming gets the job done, however can’t you accomplish anything using OOP that you can with procedural?

References

Stroustrup, B. (1988). What is object-oriented programming? IEEE Software, 5(3), 10-20. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/52.2020