Resolved Steve Jobs' quote about software "objects"

An real world example would be a software program is written (coded) in such a way that all functionality of the program has its own set of instructions. Get the idea that the program has a window (object) and a menu bar (object) with 5 top level menu items: File, Edit, View, Tools, Help, and each has sub-menus. (5 objects) And the programmer wrote separate code for each menu. I'm not talking about the links in such menus, but rather the more basic instructions like "what does the cursor look like when it's placed over a menu" or "does the text turn bold ".

Well, older style programming required the developer to write out instructions for the cursor and text color for each (File, Edit, View...etc). This takes more time and effort, and future upgrades to the software program often broke earlier functionality resulting in what's know to programmers as "spaghetti code ". He had to write the original code, add upgraded feature code that broke existing features, write additional code that fixes the broken features, and repeat that every time the software gets updated.

Newer programming languages support what's know as object-oriented-code. The programmer writes what's known as a class, i.e. a set of instructions for "cursor and text" in program menus. This "class" is then reusable anywhere else in the program simply by writing one line of code that "calls it into play ". Thus, one small class that get used by File, Edit, View...etc. Resulting in more efficient software. Not only that, the work the programmer did can also be used later in other software programs if he needs it, saving time and effort.

 

Here's another example:

The Web page you are looking at right now consists of boxes. Everything on this page is in a box. Every image, paragraph of text, button, table, etc. has a width & height. By default, these boxes do not have borders, but borders can be displayed if desired.

Think of every box as an object. Each object has its own properties: width, height, borders, border color, name, ID, etc. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) can be used to classify objects on a Web page.

Web page objects also include javascript scripts, videos, images, etc.

For example, when coding a Web page the developer can write out a paragraph of text like so:
<p width= "200" height= "100 "><strong>This is a sentence.</strong></p>
<p width= "200" height= "100 "><strong>This is another sentence.</strong></p>
<p width= "200" height= "100 "><strong>This is yet another sentence.</strong></p>

If he used CSS, he could write a class like so, which is stored in a single file and implemented automatically by the browser:
p.thread-text {width:200px; height: 100px; font-weight:bold;}
<p class= "thread-text ">This is a sentence.</p>
<p class= "thread-text ">This is another sentence.</p>
<p class= "thread-text ">This is yet another sentence.</p>

See how much more efficient object oriented programming is?