oopthe big picture so far in this bookwe've been using the term "objectgenerically reallythe code written up to this point has been object-based--we've passed objects around our scriptsused them in expressionscalled their methodsand so on for our code to qualify as being truly object-oriented (oo)thoughour objects will generally need to also participate in something called an inheritance hierarchy this begins our exploration of the python class-- coding structure and device used to implement new kinds of objects in python that support inheritance classes are python' main object-oriented programming (ooptoolso we'll also look at oop basics along the way in this part of the book oop offers different and often more effective way of programmingin which we factor code to minimize redundancyand write new programs by customizing existing code instead of changing it in place in pythonclasses are created with new statementthe class as you'll seethe objects defined with classes can look lot like the built-in types we studied earlier in the book in factclasses really just apply and extend the ideas we've already coveredroughlythey are packages of functions that use and process built-in object types classesthoughare designed to create and manage new objectsand support inheritance-- mechanism of code customization and reuse above and beyond anything we've seen so far one note up frontin pythonoop is entirely optionaland you don' need to use classes just to get started you can get plenty of work done with simpler constructs such as functionsor even simple top-level script code because using classes well requires some up-front planningthey tend to be of more interest to people who work in strategic mode (doing long-term product developmentthan to people who work in tactical mode (where time is in very short supplystillas you'll see in this part of the bookclasses turn out to be one of the most useful tools python provides when used wellclasses can actually cut development time radically they're also employed in popular python tools like the tkinter gui apiso most python programmers will usually find at least working knowledge of class basics helpful