Chapter 17 Classes and Methods

17.12 Glossary

object-oriented language:

A language that provides features, such as programmer-defined types and methods, that facilitate object-oriented programming.

object-oriented programming:

A style of programming in which data and the operations that manipulate it are organized into classes and methods.

method:

A function that is defined inside a class definition and is invoked on instances of that class.

subject:

The object a method is invoked on.

positional argument:

An argument that does not include a parameter name, so it is not a keyword argument.

operator overloading:

Changing the behavior of an operator like + so it works with a programmer-defined type.

type-based dispatch:

A programming pattern that checks the type of an operand and invokes different functions for different types.

polymorphic:

Pertaining to a function that can work with more than one type.