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You have completed Object-Oriented JavaScript!
You have completed Object-Oriented JavaScript!
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What is an object? Why are objects important? In this video, learn about the "what" and "why" of object-oriented programming.
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So what is an object?
0:00
An object is a neat and
0:01
tidy package of information about
something you want to use in your code.
0:02
This package contains
a group of properties and
0:07
functions that work together to
represent something in your program.
0:09
As a reminder,
an object's properties are a series of
0:14
key value pairs that hold
information about the object.
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And its functions are called methods.
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Methods let your object do something or
let something be done to it.
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The term object oriented programming
is really just describing a programming
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paradigm.
0:31
Or a way of thinking about in designing
a computer program that uses objects
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as its core.
0:37
A lot of developers find it helpful to
think of object's in a code as a way to
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model real life objects.
0:41
Real life objects have states and
behaviors and so the JavaScript objects.
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In JavaScript states are represented
by the object's properties and
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behaviors are represented
by the object's methods.
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So if we were helping to
represent a house in our code.
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We can make a house object with properties
like square footage, color and year built.
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Or if we wanna to model a radio.
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We could make a radio object with
properties like station and volume and
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methods like turn off or change station.
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Just like these object's states
can be changed in real life,
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we can paint a house or build an addition.
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Tune a radio or increase the volume.
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We can change these states in our code
by updating an object's properties.
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The idea of mimicking or
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modelling real life objects is a pretty
good way to try and think about objects,
1:27
properties and methods when
we're first learning about them.
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But it's not always super realistic.
1:34
Sometimes we are trying to model real life
objects like houses or radios in our code.
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But more often,
our objects are a little more abstract or
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less analogous to things we
might use in everyday life.
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Most of the time when we design objects
we're creating an easy way to store
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information about
something via properties.
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And access, manipulate or
utilize that information via methods.
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These objects are more like data
containers than abstractions of real
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life objects.
2:05
When I build apps, I've created objects
to help me manage things like users.
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Some of the properties were username,
birthday, status and number of friends.
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The methods were addFriend() and updateStatus().
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I've also built simple games where I used
an object to store information about
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the game state.
2:21
Like the score and whose turn it was and
other objects to represent the players.
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I've also used objects when building
API wrappers to share on GitHub with
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fellow programmers.
2:30
This is some pretty conceptual stuff and
right now it might not be super obvious
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why objects are so useful or
how you'd use them in practice.
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Don't worry.
2:40
As we move through this course, we'll
cover all the ways that objects can help
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you reduce the amount of code you write.
2:44
Make your code easier to maintain and
modify and
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help you create a code base
that's easy to understand.
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A fun fact you may not know,
is that if you've been using JavaScript,
2:52
you've been using objects all along.
2:56
And you probably already have a pretty
good innate understanding of that.
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In the next video,
we are going to explore that further, and
3:02
take a look at some objects you're already
really familiar with, like arrays.
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This should help you get a clear
picture of how useful objects are and
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why you might want to create your own.
3:13
Later on in the course,
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we'll start digging into not only the
actual syntax of how we create objects.
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But you'll also start training you
brain to think about object design.
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And how and
when you should use them in your apps.
3:24
Come join me in the next video and
I'll see you soon.
3:26
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