[mminer]

I similarly have difficulty learning a concept when it's presented using real-world metaphors that aren't often actually expressed via code. This is how object oriented programming was taught to me: imagine a door object, which contains methods open and close, and it contains a knob property, which is its own object with functions to turn left and right, and so forth. Once you're familiar with OOP this might seem like a good way to explain the concept, but without a specific application to apply it to, it's difficult to see the purpose.

[keerthiko]

OOP examples such as these and their instruction in traditional schooling is arguably one of the biggest failures of computer science education of our time. This is literally the last thing object oriented patterns are ever used for (depicting real world objects as members of categories). They are primarily designed for describing systems that are managing the user's interactions in the software rather than representations of real-world physical objects.

The only time these overlap is in video games, which is usually not used as the context for teaching software development when OOP is taught.