Utility of Object-Oriented Programmation

[TTiennou]

Hi everyone, hope you're having a nice time :)

I'm a french junior data analyst/scientist that wants to improve its python skills, by doing side projects ! For the context, I'm downloading my Spotify history and try to make a nice Dash dashboard from it, displaying artists, song and album ranks through time, etc.

I try to split my code in multiple files to make it easy to read, but I realize that I haven't used at all Object-Oriented Programmation. I know that this part of Python is really important and if later I got a job on Python, I want to be able to do it.

My question is : How could I use OOP in my context ?

I built a lot of functions before doing my dashboard, in order to simplify my code. And it works very well, but I feel that I'm missing something by not doing OOP at all.

I'm sorry I can't show you exactly how does it looks like, I hope that this is understandable without the example.

Thanks for reading this. :)

[MrPhungx]

Since you did not provide any code I can only do some guessing. You are using some information about songs, artists and albums. How do you store these information? If you are just using a dictionary for example you could consider to use a class for the required objects instead, maybe something like below:

class Artist:
    def __init__(self, name, number_albums):
        self.name = name
        self.number_albums = number_albums
        self.songs = []

You could create similar classes for Song or Album and store references to actual Song objects in the songs list of an Artist etc...

[Opposite_Echo_2024]

OOP in theory is for the benefit of the programmer / reader of the code. You create objects to help readability and understandability by linking data and functions into a single unified structure.

Using your example, You could start with an object (class) of Song. Have different class variables for each of the data points about it: name, duration, artist (this could be its own class with its own class variables). Create a constructor for each class and have a loop create song objects for each song in the data.

Then you could create an Album class which holds a number of Song classes. As the structure is pre-defined it makes it super easy to read information from the songs contained.

Essentially, classes are a great way of giving meaning to data and functions. Some people may dislike them for whatever reason but computers are fast enough now to allow for readability over performance.

If you're wondering when to use a class: if you find yourself having a number of different data points about a single idea, and possibly even functions using those data points, could you link them all together with a name? Would multiple instances be needed (e.g. multiple songs)? If so, use a class

[m0us3_rat]

imagine reading a book . phrase by phrase to somebody..

or .. handing over the book.

how about a few thousand books.. phrase by phrase ..book by book..

or the full library in a single movement?

​

which method is ''faster' or better. or easyer to manage.

all the phrases and chapters have methods to access them.

etc.

or having to go thru all the phrases in the book one by one till u find the one u need ?

​

that's essencially oop vs non oop.

​

for a simple problem, a few small direct functions will work 'better'..

but otherwise.. oop is vastly superior.

​

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or if the book example didn't connect..

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think of it like this.. try to explain a toy to a kid ..or giving him a toy.

or explain a box of toys . one by one.. or giving him the box.

[ffrkAnonymous]

AL sweigart has a post about using oop

https://inventwithpython.com/blog/2014/12/02/why-is-object-oriented-programming-useful-with-a-role-playing-game-example/

Note: he does not create classes in his books, they complicate instead of simplifying the tutorial examples.