Objects: a change of perspective
20-minute lesson · module-classes-01
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Objects: a change of perspective
20-minute lesson · module-classes-01
- Explain the difference between a procedural call and a method call.
- Recognize that every Python value is already an object with methods.
- Use `type(...)` and `dir(...)` to inspect an object.
- Distinguish "a class" (the blueprint) from "an instance" (a particular one).
Source attribution
Status: adapted
How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Interactive Edition — source · Classes — Basics / Object-oriented programming / A change of perspective / Objects Revisited
Adaptation notes. Reading rewritten in our voice. Examples grounded in objects students have already used (strings, lists, dictionaries) before defining new ones — so the OOP shift feels like noticing something that was always there. Hidden tests focus on perspective shift (method-call vs. function-call equivalence), not on defining classes yet — class definition is the next lesson.
License notes. Original chapter is GNU FDL 1.3 (Brad Miller and David Ranum). No verbatim text from the original is reproduced here.