Is Java a Magic OOP Bullet?

The focus of this chapter has been to introduce the concepts of good OOP and to outline some of the standard notation used to document object-oriented designs. The chapter has intentionally avoided complicated coding implementations ; the rest of this book will help you build the knowledge to do that.

Now that you have seen many of the fundamentals of OOP programming, at least at a high level, it should be pointed out why it was important to cover these topics before getting into the specifics of Java programming. Java isn't a magic bullet for creating OOP programs. Although Java embraces the OOP paradigm, it is still possible (and not unusual) for programmers to write structured programs using Java. Unfortunately, it's not unusual to see Java programs written that do not exploit any of the key OOP tools just covered, such as polymorphism.

By introducing OOP at this stage, hopefully you can avoid the bad habits of structured programming instead of having to break them later. You need to remember that OOP is as much a different way of thinking as it is a different way of programming. After you have covered the example applications and applets throughout this book and gained a better understanding of OOP, run through the concepts pointed out in this chapter again to help keep some of the justification for the language features provided in mind as you begin to develop your own programs.