Treat objects as objects

This may seem obvious; you should generally give separate objects in your problem domain a special class in your code. We've seen examples of this in the case studies in previous chapters; first, we identify objects in the problem and then model their data and behaviors.

Identifying objects is a very important task in object-oriented analysis and programming. But it isn't always as easy as counting the nouns in a short paragraph, as we've been doing. Remember, objects are things that have both data and behavior. If we are working only with data, we are often better off storing it in a list, set, dictionary, or some other Python data structure (which we'll be covering thoroughly in Chapter 6, Python Data Structures). On the other hand, if we are working only with behavior, but no stored data, a simple function is more suitable.

An object, however, has both data and behavior. Proficient Python programmers use built-in data structures unless (or until) there is an obvious...