© 2007 The Smart Method Ltd

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Session Three: The Object-

Orientated Paradigm

When Socrates proclaimed that all bees are “just the same but different"

perhaps he was talking about objects but was just a little ahead of his

time.

While a (now obscure) language called Simula established most of the

key concepts of Object Orientated programming in 1967, object orientated

programming only became mainstream with Bjarne Stroustroup’s

definition of the C++ programming language in 1985. Had computers

been around in Socrates’ time we might have been using these techniques

about 2,400 years earlier!

In the last session we had a taste of running before we could crawl. In the

next two sessions we’ll learn enough about the Access Object model and

the VBA Programming language to be able to crawl, or perhaps even

walk in a slightly wobbly way.

This chapter begins by teaching you the extremely simple concepts

behind objects and their three ways of interfacing with the outside world:

properties, methods and events. We’ll even attach a little VBA code to an

event.

You will end this session with a full appreciation of what objects are,

what they can do, and what an object model is.

Session Objectives

By the end of this session you will be able to:

Understand object properties

Understand object methods

Understand object events

Understand some of the objects in the Access object model

When I ask you for one virtue, you present me with a swarm of them,

which are in your keeping. Suppose that I carry on the figure of the

swarm, and ask of you, what is the nature of the bee. And you answer

that there are many kinds of bees. And I reply: But do bees differ as

bees, because there are many and different kinds of them; or are they

not rather to be distinguished by some other quality, as for example

beauty, size, or shape. How would you answer me.

Socrates as transcribed by Plato (Meno) 399 BC

Session3

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