What's the best way to define the words “class” and “object” to someone who hasn't used them?

Question

My neighbor is taking \"Intro to Java\", and asked me to help explain a few of the first-day concepts. I realized that since I do this everyday, I don\'t have the beginner\

Answer 1

You might find this talk by Guy L. Steele interesting: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8860158196198824415#

Answer 2

We can also understand the concept of class and object as: as a class is a template so lets have following two examples: Example 1: a recipe of a cake is a template so its a class and cakes that are made following recipe are the objects. Example 2: A brick maker is a class and bricks are objects

Answer 3

A class description is like a blueprint for a house. All the houses built from that blueprint are objects of that class. A given house is an instance. A tenant can be a changing variable in the house. An example of a method is the procedure by which the post office sends and receives messages (mail) to the house via its mailbox.

Answer 4

A java class is the structure or blueprint of an object and object is the instance(memory creation) of a class.

Example: Car is an object(real world entity). firstly, make the structure or design of a Car it's class and when the design of car, to convert real world Car it's an Object. the Car(object) is working now base behalf of design of a car(class).

Answer 5

A class is a blueprint/template which you use to create objects. An object is an instance of a class.