CPE 112 – Computer Methods in Engineeing

Electrical and Computer Engineering

16 of 17

UAH

CPE 112

Abstract Data Types

•To cope with complexity, the human mind engages in abstraction-the act of separating the essential qualities of an idea or object from the details of how it works or is composed.

•To manage complexity, software developers regularly use two important abstraction techniques:control abstraction and data abstraction

•An example of control abstraction is a function call. Ex. 4.6 + sqrt(x)

•We use data abstraction when we define a new type. We concentrate initially on its logical properties and defer implementation details.