What is a class? A class is basically a cookie cutter. It is a blue print. It is a design that allows you to mass produce cookies that are more or less the same. You can of course have cookies that are slightly different: you can have a cookie that is made of chocolate, or another that is green, or another that is bigger or small, soft or crunchy etc. you can change the specifications of the cookie according to any design configurations specified in your blue print.

What is an instance? People use the phrase: “X is an instance of Class cookie”. What do they mean by that? A cookie is just a design. Any cookie that is made which is based off that particular design is said to be “an instance” of that cookie. Basically we know that the cookie came from that particular cookie cutter.

……and that is more or less the basic concept in pictures.

Tomorrow I will try to explain the entire concept by analogy.