Object Oriented Programming (OOP) .... as in OOPs i didn't really know what this was

To be honest, after the first week of classes I was still fairly unsure at what exactly Object Oriented Programming really meant or why I needed to understand such a seemingly-abstract thing, so I mostly just ignored the idea. Eventually, I realized I would be required to write this post about it, so I  forced myself to research what it entails.

Object-oriented programming is programming focused on creating objects that have properties and things like methods. It's different from procedural programming which focuses on the procedures that operate on data. The article we were directed to on the course calendar says, "Usually, each object definition corresponds to some object or concept in the real world, and the functions that operate on that object correspond to the ways real-world objects interact," which kind of reminds me of why I'm in this course to being with. CSC148 is a pre-requisite for enrolment in the Cognitive Science major. I think I'm supposed to be taking this course to understand how thinking processes work for the purpose of creating artificial intelligence and how the way we program computers reflects the way humans themselves think (???). In this way, object-oriented programming and designing classes in the way that the quotation above describes really makes me think about how computers store info and how our real-life brains store information in the same way, as objects with attributes.

 

Anyway, at first I really did not understand why we needed to know what kind of programming style we were using when we created classes and such, but now I can see why it would help to know such a thing.