Summary: Class Definitions—the Fundamentals

A class is a plan for creating objects. It contains declarations for the data fields associated with its objects and definitions of methods that implement the objects’ behaviors.

The words public and private are examples of access modifiers that indicate where a class, method, or data field can be used. Any class can use something that is public. A private class, method, or data field can be used only by the class that defines it.

When creating a class, we should specify its methods and write statements that use them. Only after we are satisfied with our design should we implement the methods.

We should make each data field in a class private by beginning its declaration with the access modifier private. Doing so forces a ...