What's the difference between a method and a function?

Question

Can someone provide a simple explanation of methods vs. functions in OOP context?

Answer 1

for me: the function of a method and a function is the same if I agree that:

• a function may return a value
• may expect parameters

Just like any piece of code you may have objects you put in and you may have an object that comes as a result. During doing that they might change the state of an object but that would not change their basic functioning for me.

There might be a definition differencing in calling functions of objects or other codes. But isn't that something for a verbal differenciations and that's why people interchange them? The mentions example of computation I would be careful with. because I hire employes to do my calculations:

new Employer().calculateSum( 8, 8 );

By doing it that way I can rely on an employer being responsible for calculations. If he wants more money I free him and let the carbage collector's function of disposing unused employees do the rest and get a new employee.

Even arguing that a method is an objects function and a function is unconnected computation will not help me. The function descriptor itself and ideally the function's documentation will tell me what it needs and what it may return. The rest, like manipulating some object's state is not really transparent to me. I do expect both functions and methods to deliver and manipulate what they claim to without needing to know in detail how they do it. Even a pure computational function might change the console's state or append to a logfile.