What are the advantages of a object oriented language over the procedural language?

I am a HSC student studying of science field. I have planned already that I will opt for software development. However I know that C is the base of language but still it is about to be discarded from the further syllabus and the first of the semester is going to begin with C++, but do not you people think C language is the basic language , before you start with other programming. I do not know how C differs from other , but know only that C language is similar to PASCAL and FORTRAN, and C++ has somewhat similarities with modern programming languages such as Java, Visual Basic and C# . What is a procedural language and an object oriented language , I have just heard these terms but never understood. It would be far more helpful if any programmer or developer comments on this. Eagerly waiting for your responses.

Yes you are correct, I am a BSc(IT) student studying in the final year of my graduation. C was there in our syllabus and yes indeed it is essential to learn C first before you begin with other languages especially C++ language . Though is slight different from C++ , but C language should not be removed from the syllabus at all as it brought revolution in the programming language. But as the demand in the softwares increased, it gave birth to the complexity in the language to code the project, a slight change in the code lead to the change the whole set of procedure,. any code written in a C language is written in a set of procedures , which are to be followed one by one. That is why a C language is called as procedural language. Object oriented concept is totally different from the procedural code being used in C language. There were lots of programming languages before C such as FORTRAN , COBOL, PASCAL, they all fall in the same category the C language does.

Yes I agree with you, you should know all the C language thoroughly if you want you want to learn the other programming languages especially C++, It has almost all features of C language but has eliminated a lot of complexities of the code . It has removed the biggest obstacle of procedural concept and implemented a new approach of Object orientation programming. This approach ,not just removes a single problem found in C language but also avoids repeatations of the code. If InC language if the code was to be written for two instances then the whole set of procedures was to coded for the both, but it was eliminated in the object oriented. Indirectly it saves the time and space utility.

This is indeed a very wrong step been taken by the University , discarding c language means the students are really deprived from being learning a basic language which stands as a benchmark for the programmers. Procedural languages such as C language are very Robust and is very suitable for Unix like operating system such as Linux and also suits the Windows Kernel. On the other hand if you really have decided to be programmer , then you should begin with a procedural language concept. If started with a object oriented language and easier languages , the students will mug up codes rather than trying to learn it. So if you really want to learn and develop programs you should begin with C.

In an object oriented language everything is considered as an object. Suppose if you want to generate a code that helps in updating his salary account in a organization, then using object oriented approach then you can create a class of a name 'employee' and it can have multiple variable names that can represent employee's name, salary and his contact numbers in various data types. If you want to represent the same employee who has a bank account in a Bank class , then it is also possible in C++ language , you can create multiple instances of the employee, each instance is called as an object and is used as a reference to the methods/functions and data members of it's respective class. If you try to code the above example in C , it will make the whole code too much complicated to understand and even a single addition of anything will require to change the whole code.

A procedural must follow a certain procedures, failing to which a programmer will counter error or bugs in the code. This is where an object oriented language overcomes a procedural language. There are four fundamentals features an object oriented language must posses. They are Encapsulation, data hiding , data abstraction and Inheritance.

• Data Abstraction :

A data abstraction means a developer can abstract both the code and it's data from the whole program if he is eligible to do so. There are basically two
types of abstraction , one is data abstraction and the other is functional abstraction.A data abstraction as already mans to derive the code as required from the program and a funtional data abstraction means to derive the method from any class if rewuired to invoke from other class.
The data abstraction enables modular design of a program, ensures security and flexibility.

• Encapsulation :

Encapsulation means to bind or wrap all the data members and member functions in one single entity, and that entity is referred as a class.

• Data hiding :

[LIST]Data hiding means to hide all the data members of a class with the help of access modifiers to prevent it from being inherited by any other class.

• Inheritance:

Inheritance means to derive a new class from an existing class in order to avoid redundancy in the program.

What generally makes an object-orientated concept much more convincing over those procedural codes, I think there are many reasons, many people will have different idea to represent their reasons and make this perception much more clear than the other. But if you ask me they all are trying to make the people understand the same logic but in number of ways and this was really a hot topic, when the first language was introduced that used this concept. To be honest and precise, there are some contradictions too. In some areas this procedural code do have an edge over the objects and classes. For instance, there are certain code written written in procedural languages such as C or Fortran, in which too you will be able to locate object-oriented concepts. But still there are a lot of vital characteristics which these procedural languages will not be able to tackle, if it does but not completely but partially. However, it is said by a lot of people that the features and concepts included in object-orientation are ‘modern’, I am totally with them if they say so, each and every new concept and idea included in it will remind you how modern a programming language can be. There are many such reasons like that which proves the capability of these modern languages and justifies the reasons why the object orientation is still such a topic of discussion.There are a lots of facilities that are provided by these modern language. but in order to understand these facilities you will have to understand the key features of this type of languages and they are data bindings, objects, polymorphism ,inheritance, data abstraction etc.

Followings are advantages of object oriented language over procedural language :

1) In object oriented language everything is object and dynamic where as in procedural you have to follow sequence for programs and implementation.
2) Procedural language does not have extra packaging like object oriented.
3) If you wish to save a lot of code through reusable components and frameworks and designs, it's best to use an object oriented paradigm in your solution.