Ok I have a few questions.

[brocksoffice]

I've been Reading Core Java Programming by Cay S. Horstman and Gary Cornell. I have to say that the chapter on Object Oriented Programming is somewhat vague.

1.) My first question is why do you need to construct an object? I've seen code be run directly from a class, so why do you need to instantiate an object.

2.) My second question is where is an object instantiated? Does it get instantiated inside a class or does it get instantiated outside of the class.

3.) My third question is can you show me how the basic structure of an object being instantiated from a class looks like? With all the code needed to compile and run the example.

4.) My fourth question is what does a constructor look like versus a method. Assuming the model looks like the following
{
constructor
constructor
...
method
method
...
instance field
instance field
...

I know that you might tell me to just do a google search, but I've tried googling these questions and I didn't come up with answers. In my book there are many snippets of code, but not very many full examples that the developer can create.

[awinston]

Thankfully, Oracle has anticipated some of these questions:

1. What Is an Object? (The Java™ Tutorials > Learning the Java Language > Object-Oriented Programming Concepts)

2. An object is instantiated inside a class. You can instantiate the object when you define a variable:

String word = "hello";

...or you can define a variable and instantiate its object later inside a method:

String word;
...
public static void main(String[] args)
{
    word = "hello";
}

3.Creating Objects (The Java™ Tutorials > Learning the Java Language > Classes and Objects) (There is a workable demo that you can download).

4. What a constructor looks like: Providing Constructors for Your Classes (The Java™ Tutorials > Learning the Java Language > Classes and Objects) What a standard method looks like: Defining Methods (The Java™ Tutorials > Learning the Java Language > Classes and Objects)

[Fubarable]

...or you can define a variable and instantiate its object later inside a method:

String word;
...
public static void main(String[] args)
{
    word = "hello";
}

...

Please be careful when using instance variables inside of static methods. Perhaps you wanted

static String word;
...
public static void main(String[] args)
{
    word = "hello";
}

[awinston]

Please be careful when using instance variables inside of static methods. Perhaps you wanted

static String word;
...
public static void main(String[] args)
{
    word = "hello";
}

That was a bad example on my part. Let me fix that:

String word;
...
public void someMethod()
{
    word = "hello";
}

Let me clarify that the above is legal although more confusing and not a better choice than this:

String word = "hello";

[DarrylBurke]

brocksoffice, please go through the Forum Rules -- particularly the third paragraph.

db

[brocksoffice]

DarrylBurke my mistake... sorry I'll be more descriptive in my next title post.