Information hiding is a fundamental principle in software engineering that involves encapsulating data and behavior within objects to minimize external dependencies and maintain data integrity. Consider a bank account object: it encapsulates sensitive data like the account balance and customer information, as well as behavior like depositing, withdrawing, and checking the balance. By hiding this data and behavior within the object and providing a controlled interface for interaction, we ensure that the account state can only be modified through well-defined, validated methods.
Encapsulation promotes loose coupling between objects. The account object’s internal workings are hidden; other objects only need to know about its public interface. This minimizes dependencies, allowing the account’s internal implementation to change without impacting other parts of the system as long as the public interface remains constant.
Access modifiers like private, protected, and public control encapsulation. Private members are only accessible within the object, protected within subclasses, and public to all. Judicious use of access modifiers enforces information hiding. For the account, the balance would be private, while deposit and withdraw methods would be public.
Getters and setters provide controlled access to an object’s state, enforcing validation and maintaining integrity. A setter for the account balance could prevent negative values, for example. This way, information hiding protects the object’s state and ensures it’s always valid and consistent.
Author: John Rowan
I am a Senior Android Engineer and I love everything to do with computers. My specialty is Android programming but I actually love to code in any language specifically learning new things.Share this:
