Encapsulation

So far, what we have really seen is what amounts to a kind of code-organizing convention, although we did discuss the wider goals of all this OOP stuff. Now we will take things further and begin to see how we actually manage to achieve encapsulation with OOP.

Tip

Definition of encapsulation

As we have learned encapsulation means keeping the internal workings of your code safe from interference from the programs that use it, allowing only the variables and methods you choose to be accessed. This means your code can always be updated, extended, or improved without affecting the programs that use it, as long as the exposed parts are still made available in the same way. It also allows the code that uses your encapsulated code to be much simpler and easier to maintain because much of the complexity of the task is encapsulated in your code.

But didn't I say that we don't have to know what is going on inside? So you might question what we have seen so far. If we are constantly setting...