ADO.NET Programming in Visual Basic .NET By Steve Holzner, Bob Howell
Table of Contents
Chapter 2. Object-Oriented Programming in Visual Basic .NET
Until this version, VB was not object oriented in a strictly academic sense. While it is true that VB 6 uses objects and can create classes, they are not true classes in the OOP paradigm. They are really COM objects, and there's an important difference. For a language to be truly object oriented, it must support the following capabilities:
Encapsulation Data in a class must be able to be fully hidden from the rest of the program. The language must provide a mechanism for controlling this access. Moreover, the class must be self-sufficient, with no external dependencies other than its immediate parent.
Inheritance Classes derived from other classes must have a mechanism for inheriting the functionality and data of the parent class.
Polymorphism Literally many forms, it means that methods can have many signatures and the compiler determines which member to call based on the parameters given.
