British Journal of Computer, Networking and Information Technology

ISSN: 2689-5315
Volume 6, Issue 1, 2023 (pp. 83-93) www.abjournals.org

DETAILED STUDY OF THE OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING (OOP)

FEATURES IN PYTHON
Nzerue-Kenneth Peace Ezinne, Onu Fergus Uchenna, Denis Ashishie Undiukeye,
Igwe Joseph Sunday and Ogbu Nwani Henry
Department Of Computer Science, Ebonyi State University, Abakaliki - Nigeria

Cite this article: ABSTRACT: Human beings are naturally classified; OOP is
Nzerue-Kenneth P.E., Onu closely aligned to how human brains work. The Mathematical
F.U., Denis A.U., Igwe J.S.,
Ogbu N.H. (2023), Detailed
functional approach is a more rigorous way to capture an idea; it
Study of the Object-Oriented is more difficult to transpose and the code is not easily readable.
Programming (OOP) Features To overcome the limitations of procedural, structural, and
in Python. British Journal of
Computer, Networking and
functional programming, OOP was developed. Because of its
Information Technology 6(1), versatility, it supports various programming styles which include
83-93. DOI: maintenance, addition and overriding; however, modification of
10.52589/BJCNIT-
FACSOJAO
existing code is made easier. OOP programs prevent you from
repeating code, making developers choose OOP in their python
program because a class can be defined once and reused many
Manuscript History times (Thelin, 2020). By the end of this article, you will be able to
Received: 18 Sept 2023 create classes, instantiate objects from them, and integrate the
Accepted: 7 Nov 2023 four methods of OOP by creating modules of Python projects. With
Published: 29 Nov 2023 the basic concept of OOP in Python, this article has shown how
we can hide our data by making it private (abstraction), allowing
for code reusability (inheritance), constraining dependency
Copyright © 2023 The Author(s).
This is an Open Access article
management through polymorphism and rapping data and
distributed under the terms of function together to prevent data from being accessed by the code
Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
outside this shield (encapsulation).
4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND
4.0), which permits anyone to KEYWORDS: OOP Object Oriented Programming, features of
share, use, reproduce and
redistribute in any medium, OOP, Inheritance, Encapsulation, Abstraction, Polymorphism.
provided the original author and
source are credited.

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British Journal of Computer, Networking and Information Technology
ISSN: 2689-5315
Volume 6, Issue 1, 2023 (pp. 83-93) www.abjournals.org

INTRODUCTION
In the 1930s, lambda calculus, and the Turing machine explored the first functional and
imperative programming paradigms mathematically. In the 1940s, low-level language like
assembly and machine code appeared. Towards the end of the 1950s, high-level languages and
their imperatives, such as FORTRAN and COBOL, appeared. Both functional programming
and imperative programming are rooted in the mathematics of computation theory. To help to
manage complexity in large programs and solve the rigorous way to capture an idea in
functional and imperative programming paradigms, Alan Kay circa in 1966 coined "Object-
Oriented Programming" (OOP). Object-oriented programming is the use of predefined
programming modular units (objects, classes, subclasses, and so forth) in order to make
programming faster and easier to maintain (Hemmendinger, 2008).
Object Oriented Programming is a programming paradigm that uses the concept of classes and
objects to create models based on the real-world environment which helps the programmer to
develop complex software (Ryan, 2020). Here, software programs are simplified into reusable
pieces of code called classes. These classes are used to create individual instances of an object.
Examples of OOP include the following: Python, JavaScript, C++, Java, and many more.
Object-oriented programming helps us represent things in our code and OOP is a methodology
or style of managing your code. It was invented to better organize your code in logical units
which are called classes and objects. Before the invention of OOP, procedural code and
spaghetti code were in use. Functional programming thinks of programming as Maths while
OOP thinks of programming as modeling; the code is more navigable because it is closer to the
problem. It allows you to explore problems in small chunks in a way that is closely related to
how we think about the problem. The OOP programming paradigm was developed in order to
overcome the limitations of procedural programming (Learn Computer Science, 2021).
One of the challenges of programming is how to represent data in our code. To represent
straightforward data in our code is very easy, for instance, storing integers, floats, or even a
list. But what if you want to represent something a little bit more complex? That is where
object-oriented programming comes into play in Python programming. More so, python offers
various tools for performing cluster analysis of data. In clustered data, observations within a
cluster show similarity between themselves because they share common features different from
observations in the other clusters. In a given population, different clustering may surface
because correlation may occur across more than one dimension (Yahya et al., 2023). There are
three techniques for how to form clusters in python. These techniques include spectral
clustering, K-means clustering and Gaussian mixture models.
The core purpose of this paper is to elaborate on the impact of OOP in Python. This is achieved
by exploring the four concepts of OOP, which include the following: Encapsulation,
Inheritance, Polymorphism, and Abstraction.

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British Journal of Computer, Networking and Information Technology
ISSN: 2689-5315
Volume 6, Issue 1, 2023 (pp. 83-93) www.abjournals.org

Classes and Object

Classes: A class is a blueprint or template through which objects are being created. The class
consists of attributes (properties), functions (methods), and behavior. Everything in Python is
an object. All the objects have a type; these types are declared using Classes. Properties are
defined in a class and it is possible to assign values to properties while the object is being
instantiated. The properties are collectively known as the state of the objects creating a simple
class.
Example of a class in Python:

To create a class in Python, first, we use a "Class" keyword to begin and set its properties.
In the example above, we have created a class named Parent. It has three data attributes which
are fname, name, and age. We have also defined a method called function below. We can create
an instance of the person class object just as seen below:
Objects: Objects are the real thing; they are created from the class name. Objects can contain
methods and these methods are functions that belong to the objects. Creating an object in a
class is called instantiation; properties can be assigned values, making each object a type of
unique entity. For example, we use Parent to create an object like this:

85 Article DOI: 10.52589/ BJCNIT-FACSOJAO

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British Journal of Computer, Networking and Information Technology
ISSN: 2689-5315
Volume 6, Issue 1, 2023 (pp. 83-93) www.abjournals.org

Concept of Object OOP, Its Application and Impact in Python

1. Encapsulation
2. Inheritance
3. Polymorphism
4. Abstraction.
Abstraction:
This means showing the necessary details to the user of a computer. An abstract class can be
considered as a blueprint for other classes (GeeksforGeeks, 2021). In abstraction, we care about
calling the method not the interpretation, just like remote TV; you are just pressing the button
to change the channel but not taking care of the internal information like what will happen
when you change the channel. Abstraction means to simplify reality. Abstraction means data
hiding. It is the act of representing the essential feature without knowing the background
details. Here, we can show necessary information and hide the unnecessary part, e.g., in a car,
the user is interested in starting the car without knowing what is happening inside the engine
of the car or what happens when you press the brake of a car because that is not necessary for
you.
Inheritance
Inheritance is a powerful future that allows you to code reusability. Inheritance is the ability of
a class to inherit methods and/or attributes of another class (Lakshmanamoorthy, 2021). This
allows you to extend the class instead of typing the code again and again. Inheritance allows
us to create a class from another class; it minimizes the working time of a programmer and
reduces errors and repetition. In inheritance, the object of a class acquires some properties of
another class.

● The class that is inherited from is known as the base class or super class

● The class that is inherited to is known as a derived class or subclass.

For example, we can create a child's class from the parent class or the super class; as new
objects are created, they inherit characteristics from existing ones and even add their own
features also, just as seen below:

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British Journal of Computer, Networking and Information Technology
ISSN: 2689-5315
Volume 6, Issue 1, 2023 (pp. 83-93) www.abjournals.org

Impact of Inheritance and Its application in Python

In this example, the child's class copies the whole attribute of the parent's class: both data and
methods from the parent's class. This concept is called inheritance. Composition is generally
favored over class inheritance because of the following enhanced flexibility, reduced
complexity, clearer interfaces, and promote code reuse (Elliott, 2023).
Note: A child class can add more new attributes outside the ones inherited from the parent's
class.
Types of Inheritance in Python
The derived class may inherit all properties or some of the properties from the super class.
Equally, a class can inherit properties from more than one class or more than one level
generation. Typically, inheritance is classified into five categories (Rout, 2020):

● Single inheritance

● Multiple inheritance

● Multilevel inheritance
Hierarchical inheritance

● Hybrid inheritance.

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British Journal of Computer, Networking and Information Technology
ISSN: 2689-5315
Volume 6, Issue 1, 2023 (pp. 83-93) www.abjournals.org

Single Inheritance
Single inheritance enables a derived class to inherit properties from a single parent class, thus
enabling code reusability and the addition of new features to existing code (kumar_satyam
2023). Example is shown below:

Multiple Inheritance
When a class is derived from more than one base class, this type of inheritance is called multiple
inheritances. All the properties of the base classes are carried over to the derived class. Below
is an illustration of a multiple inheritance class:

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British Journal of Computer, Networking and Information Technology
ISSN: 2689-5315
Volume 6, Issue 1, 2023 (pp. 83-93) www.abjournals.org

Multilevel Inheritance
In multilevel inheritance, the properties of the derived class and the based classes are inherited
further into the new derived class. In other words this is referred to as the 2nd generation class.

Hierarchical Inheritance
Hierarchical inheritance occurs when multiple derived class are created from a single base
class, as shown below:

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British Journal of Computer, Networking and Information Technology
ISSN: 2689-5315
Volume 6, Issue 1, 2023 (pp. 83-93) www.abjournals.org

Hybrid Inheritance
This consists of various types of inheritance:
Polymorphism
This comes from the word poly which means many and morph which means form.
Polymorphism is the ability of an object to take many forms. OOP constraints dependency
management through polymorphism. An operation may show entirely different behaviors for
different data sets. Basically, it allows you to determine what kind of function to run while the
program is running. Objects are designed to share behaviors and they can take on more than
one form (Gillis & Lewis, 2021). Polymorphism means changing from one form to another
form. For example, a man is a husband, a father, and at the same time a son of a woman. In
this example, the man plays a different role in different situations. To explain it further, let us
look at this example—"Hello" can be spoken in different languages just as seen below:
Impact of Polymorphism and Its Application in Python

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British Journal of Computer, Networking and Information Technology
ISSN: 2689-5315
Volume 6, Issue 1, 2023 (pp. 83-93) www.abjournals.org

Encapsulation
This is a system of rapping data and functions together. In other words, to hide the complexity
of objects from the programs and those using them, the implementation of those codes should
be hidden and this simplifies the use of the things. Encapsulation was built on the idea of data
hiding or information hiding. This is where we restrict access to certain properties and methods
of an object to whatever is calling that object.
Encapsulation refers to the rapping up of data under a single unit. It is a mechanism that binds
code and the data it manipulates. Another way to think about encapsulation is that it is a
protective shield that prevents data from being accessed by the code outside this shield and in
this, the variable or the data of a class is hidden from any other class and can be accessed only
through any member function of the own class in which they are declared. For example, in a
capsule that envelops a drug; similarly, in encapsulation, the methods and the variables of a
class are very well hidden and safe. Another example would be a vending machine die.
Benefits of Encapsulation

● Data Hiding: Here, the user may have no idea about the inner implementation of the
class and even the user will not be aware of how the class is storing the value in the variables.
They will only see what you want them to see which is basically passing the value to a method
and then the variables are getting initialized with that value. So they do not really know what
is going on inside the class and that is one benefit of encapsulation.

● Increased Flexibility: Here, we can make the variables of the class you know
according to how you want them to be used, in case we just want it to be a read-only method
or you know it can be write-only depending on what we require.

● Reusability: With reusability, it becomes easy to change with new requirements.

Major Differences Between Abstraction and Encapsulation
Encapsulation is known for wrapping the code and data together whereas abstraction basically
provides the abstract, that is, it gives you the most necessary details in the data and it is only
the useful details that you will be seeing in abstraction. However, in encapsulation, the whole
code and all the necessary information are wrapped together. Encapsulation focuses on how
the implementation is going to work. Abstraction gives you the information you need from
your data.
In Python, plain attributes are used in order to achieve encapsulation. This is done with the help
of naming conventions through which we are able to distinguish between protected and private
members, so we add double underscores in front of the variables and any function name. It can
hide them when accessing them from out of the class or scope of the class. In other words,
python does not have any private methods but we can use the double underscore naming
convention by which we can name them private methods and sort them off. Note, a single
underscore makes a variable private but if you do not want anyone to change it, you need to
use a double underscore. For you to define it and access it, you need to define getter for
instance.

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British Journal of Computer, Networking and Information Technology
ISSN: 2689-5315
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Impact of Encapsulation and Its Application in Python

CONCLUSION
To design quality, easy-to-maintain, and robust software in Python, these four pillars are the
key ingredients. OOP in Python helps to code reusability, simplification (simple to manage),
easy to maintain, and clear structure.
With object-oriented programming, it is very easy to work with objects inside Python, declared
classes, and store your data
To overcome the limitations of procedural programming, OOP was developed. Maintenance
and modification of existing code are made easier in Python because of the impact of OOP as
new objects are created and they inherit characteristics from existing ones.
OOP is more secure because it allows the developer to protect the key data elements in Python.
This can be done by restricting data access to only methods that belong to that particular object;
this is called abstraction.
More so, OOP is less complex because of its modularity in its program, thereby making it easy
to create new data objects from existing objects. This concept makes object-oriented
programming easy to modify. To develop comprehensive and well-designed software products
in Python, it is paramount to have a clear understanding of OOP.

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British Journal of Computer, Networking and Information Technology
ISSN: 2689-5315
Volume 6, Issue 1, 2023 (pp. 83-93) www.abjournals.org

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[10] Kumar_satyam,“ Python inheritance-Python OOP-Python OOP Concept”,
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