Thread: Not getting the OOP thing!!!

Hi Guys,

As you can clearly see from my title I am not understanding the whole Object Oriented Programming "thing" more like MONSTER. I come from a procedural background and I think this is what is making it so difficult.

When I look at/read java code I understand the code and know exactly what the programmer is trying to achieve. Where I get lost is how to plan your project and how to develop it on paper and when you need to create a new class and when not to. I understand that almost everything in Java is an Object and can see how and why but do not understand how to change my thinking to build java apps.

If anyone knows of any good sites, articles or books that explains the concepts in laymans english I would appreciate it.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Owen

Thanks for the reply... Glad to know others have gone and are going through the same painful process. I am learning from SAMS teach yourself, head first java, java for dummies and trying the Lynda tutorial on Java. Like I said before, being a programmer, when I read Java code it seems to make sense however, when I want to start my own work I just cannot wrap my head around this language. Where do I start, what classes do I create? For practice I am trying to re-code some old projects I worked on in Java and I just cannot find where to start, a good workflow and what (haha, i nearly said procedurs) methods and classes I need to create.

I prob need to be patient, I have only been looking at Java for a week now. Been going at it about 3 hours a day but still not getting it. I understand most of the concepts I just do not know how to apply these OO concepts to programming yet.

Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years
And :
The Really Big Index
especially: Lesson: Object-Oriented Programming Concepts (The Java™ Tutorials > Learning the Java Language)

Originally Posted by PhHein

Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years
And :
The Really Big Index
especially: Lesson: Object-Oriented Programming Concepts (The Java™ Tutorials > Learning the Java Language)

Just read Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years and it is an interesting article. Although I believe the theory to be true I am sure that their findings do not include extreme talent. Not that I am saying that I am that talented... LOL... Good article though and a must read for anyone looking for the shortcut.

Also I did 1 of the exercises in SAMS 21 days and I coded it completely differently to what they did. They used the string.substring statement to extract the date and I used the Tokenizer to extract the string using the "/" as the character. Their source and mine gave the exact same result. Just proves how wonderful programming is...

That is a great idea. Thanks Kevin I will definitely do that.