Procedural vs object-oriented approach in Python - Hands-On Comparison

Procedural vs Object-Oriented Approach in Python

📖 Scenario: You are building a simple program to manage a list of books in a library. Each book has a title and an author. You will first create the program using a procedural approach, then improve it using an object-oriented approach.

🎯 Goal: Build a program that stores book information and prints each book's details. First, use a procedural style with dictionaries and functions. Then, use an object-oriented style with a class and methods.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list of dictionaries to store books with exact titles and authors

Create a variable to count the number of books

Use a for loop to print each book's title and author

Define a Book class with title and author attributes

Create Book objects and store them in a list

Use a for loop to print each Book object's details using a method

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Managing collections of items like books, movies, or products is common in software. Procedural code works for simple tasks, but object-oriented code helps organize complex data and behavior.

💼 Career

Understanding both procedural and object-oriented programming is important for software development jobs. Object-oriented programming is widely used in real-world applications for better code organization and reuse.

1

Create a list of books using dictionaries

Create a list called books with these exact dictionaries: {'title': '1984', 'author': 'George Orwell'}, {'title': 'To Kill a Mockingbird', 'author': 'Harper Lee'}, and {'title': 'The Great Gatsby', 'author': 'F. Scott Fitzgerald'}.

Python

# Create the list of books with dictionaries
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use square brackets [] to create a list. Each book is a dictionary with keys 'title' and 'author'.

2

Create a variable to count books

Create a variable called book_count and set it to the length of the books list using the len() function.

Python

books = [
    {'title': '1984', 'author': 'George Orwell'},
    {'title': 'To Kill a Mockingbird', 'author': 'Harper Lee'},
    {'title': 'The Great Gatsby', 'author': 'F. Scott Fitzgerald'}
]
# Create book_count variable with length of books
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use len(books) to get how many books are in the list.

3

Print each book's details using a for loop

Use a for loop with variable book to iterate over books. Inside the loop, print the book's title and author in this exact format: Title: 1984, Author: George Orwell.

Python

books = [
    {'title': '1984', 'author': 'George Orwell'},
    {'title': 'To Kill a Mockingbird', 'author': 'Harper Lee'},
    {'title': 'The Great Gatsby', 'author': 'F. Scott Fitzgerald'}
]
book_count = len(books)
# Use a for loop to print each book's title and author
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use for book in books: to loop. Use an f-string to print the title and author.

4

Create a Book class and print book details using objects

Define a class called Book with an __init__ method that takes title and author parameters and stores them as attributes. Add a method called display that prints the book's title and author in the format: Title: 1984, Author: George Orwell. Create a list called book_objects with three Book objects using the same titles and authors as before. Use a for loop with variable book to call the display method on each object.

Python

books = [
    {'title': '1984', 'author': 'George Orwell'},
    {'title': 'To Kill a Mockingbird', 'author': 'Harper Lee'},
    {'title': 'The Great Gatsby', 'author': 'F. Scott Fitzgerald'}
]
book_count = len(books)
for book in books:
    print(f"Title: {book['title']}, Author: {book['author']}")

# Define Book class and create book_objects list
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Define a class with __init__ to set attributes. Add a method display to print details. Create objects and store in a list. Loop over the list and call display.