A-level Computer Science: Programming Paradigms (Procedural, Structured, OOP theory)

Procedural programming

a series of instructions tell the computer what to do with the input, in order to solve the problem. Includes many built in data types, and data structures.

Structured programming

A type of procedural programming that uses sequence, selection, iteration, and recursion, thereby splitting large programs into modular manageable chunks

Object oriented programming

A programming paradigm that structures software by organizing data and behavior into objects and classes, promoting concepts like inheritance, encapsulation, polymorphism, and abstraction

Declarative programming

where you write statements that describe the problem to be solved, and the language implementation describes the best way of solving it

Functional programming

functions are the building blocks of a program

What are states and behaviours for an object in OOP

The state is what the data looks like, and behaviour is what the data can do

What is a class in OOP

a blueprint or template for an object, that defines the attributes and behaviours of objects in that class

Inheritance in OOP

a subclass of a superclass, which inherits the same attributes but in addition has some attributes of its own

How are attributes stored and accessed in a class

within the class they are private, outside they are accessed with getters and setters

Polymorphism

A programming language's ability to process objects differently depending on their class that share similar methods

Constructor

a procedure that creates, or instantiates, a new object

Encapsulation

all data and methods of each object are wrapped up into a single entity so that the attributes and behaviours of one object cannot affect the way in which another object functions, and hiding information. It allows the source code for any object can be written, tested, and maintained independently of the code for other objects

Advantages of OOP (maintenance)

Code is organised into manageable, separate objects; Easier to update and maintain due to clearer structure and separation of concerns

Advantages of OOP (development)

Encapsulation hides internal details and allows modular independent development; Objects can be reused and extended with inheritance; Programmers are abstracted away from needing to understand the internal workings of objects

Overriding in OOP

defining a method with the same name and parameters as a method inherited from a superclass