Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) Basics

What You’ll Learn

You’ll learn the fundamental concepts of OOP: Classes and Objects.

What is OOP?

Python is an object-oriented programming language. Almost everything in Python is an object, with its properties and methods. A Class is like an object constructor, or a “blueprint” for creating objects.

Creating a Class

To create a class, use the keyword class.

class Dog:
    # A simple property
    species = "Canis familiaris"

Creating an Object

Now we can use the class named Dog to create objects (instances):

my_dog = Dog()
print(my_dog.species) # Canis familiaris

Why OOP?

OOP allows you to model real-world concepts in your code. Instead of having separate variables for a dog’s name, breed, and age, you can bundle all that data together into a single Dog object. We’ll explore this more in the next lesson!