Classes

A class is essentially a data type. Whenever we create an instance of a class we declare it so say I want to declare 10 dog ages i would go and say

int dogAge1= 3; and say int dogAge2=12; This is inefficient and is a waste of time.

Within a class we have methods and we have attributes. An attribute is similar to variables in that they hold information for us.

We want to have 2 attributes for our dog class the Name and the age. Classes allow us to build very large application without having to code

every small bit by ourselves. We have a blue print of how sth might look. Say I have a person Class and wanted to describe a specific the person the details are ### what’s called attributes. If we wanted to build a large scale application we do not want to describe every single person specifically using a bunch of different ### variables. This would be a waste of time. Instead, we create a blueprint of what a person might look like.

We can say two fields:

- a name variable

- a talk method

The above idea is a structure of a person which is known as a class. To create a new person, all we have to do is instantiate the class. This process is called

an object. The class is the blueprint and the object is the specific example. A class allows us to create different entities which are similar in structure.

Classes will defined within a file and objects will be defined as variables.

Person x = new Person();

x is what’s called an identifier

A Class is a structure/blue print and object is an instance of the class. The above has a class name Person. Person here, is what's called a custom type

x is the identifier. When we instantiate we can create n number of objects say: Alan, Waleed, Neha, Michael, Juan