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Programs are composed of a set of modules called classes. Each class is a template
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specifying a set of behaviors on
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the data of the class.
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Each class has class variables
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(sometimes called instance vars)
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to hold the data and methods (called
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functions or procedures in other
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languages) to define the behaviors.
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Each object in a program is created
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as an instance of a class. Each class
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instance has its own copy of the class
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variables.
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Classes can be used for data encapsulation, hiding the details of the data representation from the user of the class (by marking variables as private).
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