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Passing by Value or Reference?

First, let's review what values and references are.

A value is the actual data of bits and bytes which contains useful information (such as the amount of money...

Exceptions

Exceptions are special things that interrupt normal program flow. They're used to create robust methods that follow their contracts exactly. Here's a small example:


// * note: this...

Variables and Objects

Variables and objects are basically things you can hold (err, that the computer can hold in memory). They store some sort of data that represents something. We'll start by...

Recursion

For those who don't know what recursion is (and like a good laugh), click on this link: Google search: Recursion and click on the "did you mean..." item.

Hopefully you've finally...

Polymorphism

Polymorphism means to view an object as several different things. Here's a simple example: A Fararri Enzo is a Fararri, which is a car, which is an automobile, which is a vehicle,...

Methods and Functions

For all intensive purposes, methods and functions are exactly the same. Somehow, along the way Java programmers decided they wanted to call functions as methods. Also, if you...

Interfaces

Interfaces are also known as purely abstract classes: they contain only abstract methods. An abstract method is one that has not been implemented, but defines how that method is called...

Inheritance

The concept of inheritance is similar to inheritance in real life: the child gets what the parent has. Also, the child still has what the child had, and can more-or-less do what it...

Encapsulation

Encapsulation is a similar idea to Abstraction. It deals with restricting access to components of an object. A good analogy would be airport security. You're not allowed to bring...

Abstraction

Abstraction is the concept of hiding away the details. It can basically be summed up with this phrase: I don't care how it happens, just get it done.

There are many ways to abstract...

This is a post for general CS concepts. To make it easy to link to, i've posted each different concept under their own post. The emphasis will be on OOP (object oriented programming), and examples...