Objects and Classes are terms in programming which are sometimes used interchangeably, for anyone who may be confused about their meaning the below information should be helpful.
Object Oriented Programming (OOP) is a paradigm in software development for creating programs which are comprised of and utilise entities called ‘objects’. These ‘objects’ in OOP are much like objects in real life, they have some data / characteristics and can exhibit different functionalities and behaviours. By using objects we can create programs which are more easily understandable.
Classes are used (in Java and other languages) to define blueprints for the creation of these objects. These classes define the data and behaviours which are inherent to the object types we want to create. When we create an object from a particular class we call this object an instance of that class.
To make this information more concrete let’s consider a simple example. Below we define a Car class, which we can use to create Car objects in our program. These Car objects are defined by their [make, numberOfDoors, topSpeed] and have the ability to drive() (which just prints a message).
Below in the main method we can create two instances of the Car class (i.e two Car objects).
Please feel free to leave a comment below for any questions or clarifications!