1.4-Software-Development-Principles

Week 6 - Stack, heap, garbage collection and call by reference vs encapsulation

Summary

As your program runs certain types of variables become available to certain types of methods. What I mean by that is:

• Member variables: Available to all methods in the class.
• Method variables: Available to the method that declares them.
• Member variables of instances: Available to using classes through getters.
• Static variables: Available to all methods in the class, but there exists only one shared global value.

Note: Obviously point 1 and point 3 are the same set of variables only viewed from two different “positions” point 1 is from within the class, point 3 are external methods from another class that seek access to this information.

Now there are some interactions that you need to be aware of when using classes that allow you to change their state through setters.

Theory

Note: Deze pagina’s zijn op dit moment nog niet vertaald.

• Reference class variables
• Copy and Clone