Question

I am about to start learning Objective-C and I was wondering whether or not the concepts are the same as with PHP. For example, are the concepts in Object Oriented PHP the same as Objective-C, such as “Class, Instance, Message, Method, Instance Variable, Inheritance, Superclass/Subclass, and Protocol”? If so, this will I am guessing it will be much easier for me to learn and grasp since I already know the basics and foundations of Object Oriented PHP. Or are they completely different from each other?

Any help and advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Answer 1

All “propper” OO language constructs should be essentially the same. They should always have all of, or a sub section of the the following (and probably more).

• class / object (completely different)
• method (vs function)
• method visibility/access control (public, private, protected)
• constructor
• static/class variables & methods
• destructor/finalizer
• inheritance (and often, multiple inheritance)
• interface/protocol
• abstract class
• overriding
• overloading

there are plenty more terms to do with things that are more conceptual rather than language features, but that’s a short (and reasonably incomplete) list of some things that you should know for programming in ANY OO language worth it’s salt.

There’s a nice little list of terms on Wikipedia to help if you’d like.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_object-oriented_programming_terms

I’d suggest reading about the terms above, as well as

• Instance variables
• Polymorphism
• Composition
• Encapsulation

If you know your defenitions of OO, moving from one language to the next is far simpler, because you will have a very wide base to stand on and only have to learn subtle differences (as with learning any new language after knowing a few, but more so with OO concepts).