Car Construction Analogy

Lets think of Programming in Terms of Building Cars

When starting to learn OOP, it can be difficult to imagine abstract concepts like classes and objects. Using a real-world, familiar example like car manufacturing helps build intuition.

In a car factory:

• There is a design plan or blueprint showing what a car should have—number of tires, model number, colour options, and engine type.
• The factory uses this design to produce individual cars.
• Each car model produced may have unique features(colour, engine type..) but follows the same basic design(blue print) for Car Production.

This mirrors how classes and objects work in programming, making it easier to understand before diving into code.

The Class: The Car Blueprint

The class is like the blueprint for a car. It defines the general characteristics and functionality that every car of this model will have.

Lets focus on characteristics of a car, when we define a Car, we focus on characteristics (attributes) that make it a car, such as colour, model name, fuel efficiency, engine type, and gear transmission etc...

It is crucial to understand that characteristics are specific to the entity you are modelling. For example:

• Petals and petal size are characteristics of a Flower, not a car.
• Steel grade and concrete type are characteristics of a Building or Bridge, not a car.

In Object-Oriented Programming, identifying the correct characteristics is the first step because they vary entirely based on the real-world entity (object) you are representing. You must choose properties that define what that specific object is.

Syntax

#class name/ blue print name
class class_name: 
    # The __init__ method is a special method (constructor) that runs automatically 
    def __init__(self, parameter1, parameter2): 
        self.parameter1 = parameter1
        self.parameter2 = parameter2

We’ll cover self and __init__() in the upcoming lessons. For now, just keep understanding the concepts the data

Car Class - Blueprint

#Class/Blue print Name : Car
class Car:
    #Takes 3 main parameters : color, model_name
    def __init__(self, color, model_name, engine_type):
        self.color = color
        self.model_name= model_name
        self.engine_type= engine_type