Features of Object-Oriented Programming

In the traditional, procedure-oriented view of programming, a program describes a series of steps to be performed; that is, an algorithm. In the object-oriented view of programming, a program describes a system of objects interacting. It's possible to use C++ as a strictly procedural language. An object-oriented approach, however, lets you take full advantage of C++'s features.

Object-oriented programming involves a few key concepts. The most basic of these is abstraction, which makes writing large programs simpler. Another is encapsulation, which makes it easier to change and maintain a program. Finally, there is the concept of class hierarchies, a powerful classification tool that can make a program easily extensible. While you can apply these concepts using any language, only object-oriented languages support them explicitly.