Unit 10: Defining Classes

Students who complete this unit will demonstrate that they can:

• Describe the motivation for object-oriented programming, particularly encapsulation
• Create new kinds of objects by defining classes
• Specify and enforce class invariants
• Use dot-notation to access class attributes
• Compare and contrast functions and methods
• Use instantiation to create instances of a class
• Use self to create attributes (variables and methods)
• Recognize and define special methods using double-underscores
• Distinguish between class and instance attributes
• Create explicit value constructors using parameters and default parameter values
• Recognize a Python method that is not intended to be used outside of a class
• Perform class customizations (e.g. __str__, __lt__, __eq__, etc.)
• Create and use operator overloading

• Homework 10
• Preparation 10
• Technical Homework 10: Population Simulation with Classes