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I don't work at a software company, but have taught myself C# and have been using it fairly regularly. Now another engineer in the office (not a software engineer) has expressed an interested in learning to code like I can. I'm helping him through some simple console applications, but he's having some trouble grasping all the OOP concepts. He's an engineer so he's had experience with procedural programing in school, but the concept like objects, classes and instances are really challenging him.

I suggested he get the Head First C# book, but I was also wondering if anyone knew of any good tutorials on line that explained OOP principles. He's using C# but it really could be language agnostic. Also something with a lot of pictures and diagrams would be the most helpful.

the Tin Man
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Eric Anastas
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  • possible duplicates: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/355796/how-do-you-explain-oo-to-new-programmers, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/597267/defining-oop-for-a-new-programmer – Cody Gray - on strike Jan 29 '11 at 07:09

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I don't know how much he knows already, but I remember having a hard time switching from procedural to OO too. It took me a long time to figure out (in VB that was) Label1.Caption = TextBox1.Text but once I got that, a whole new world opened before me, although it took a while to get to actually creating classes and think about stuff like inheritance.

I don't know a book, but if this guy knows procedural programming and he's struggling with the same concept as I mentioned above, maybe a few metafores could help. It's almost as good as a diagram, or even better. ;)

If you compare an object to a device, let's say a cell phone, it would make sense how each different cell phone is an instance, while all cell phones of the same model have the same class. Accordingly, the buttons and/or the software on it could be seen as methods. You got a method dial(phonenumber), and you got properties, like a list of contacts. Each phone of the same class has the same properties, although the values can differ. Everyone's got different contacts in their phone book.

This is just a silly metafore, but I'm sure you can make up some other ones for other OO concepts.

GolezTrol
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  • Setting one value equal to another value is *hardly* object-oriented programming. – Cody Gray - on strike Jan 29 '11 at 07:09
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    Actually the VB example is not bad. The guy I'm helping keeps getting confused by the variableName.SomeProperty.AnotherMethod().PropertyName syntax which is just 2nd nature to me now. – Eric Anastas Jan 30 '11 at 04:34
  • @Cody Gray. I know. But it's a start. And a great start when you need to explain whan an object is and how it is used. It's good to have lived in a house before you start building one, so first pull one out of a cave and into a house, and when they're about to feel comfortable, teach them how to lay bricks. :) – GolezTrol Jan 30 '11 at 09:51