Marko Rauhamaa <ma...@pacujo.net> writes: > Anyway, an object is a fairly advanced and abstract concept.
It is a concept that, in natural language, has the huge advantage of producing correct inferences most of the time. You don't need to give a formal definition when first introducing the term “object”. Just use it, and the student will produce inferences: * an object is a distinct concrete entity * an object is distinct from other objects * an object may or may not change, but remains the same object * an object belongs to a class of similar objects, and is different from objects of different classes * an object has behaviours that are mostly the same as other objects of the same class None of this needs to be spelled out when the term is introduced; all of it will follow from the connotations of the term “object” in English. > A beginning programmer wouldn't be equipped to understand the ultimate > abstraction; an object is too all-encompassing to express anything. Nevertheless, “object” as a term in normal English will produce a bunch of helpful inferences, and avoid the need for coming up with some less-familiar term. It will also allow you to postpone a formal definition until later. -- \ “Try to learn something about everything and everything about | `\ something.” —Thomas Henry Huxley | _o__) | Ben Finney -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list