One could write a book specifically about Object Oriented Programming (OOP). This chapter is an OOP primer to get you started, but for a more in-depth explanation, check out Matt Gifford's Object Oriented Programming in ColdFusion.
Object Oriented Programming is a set of concepts and techniques that make use of the "object" language construct, to write more reusable, maintainable, and organized code. Objects are implemented differently in every language; in ColdFusion, we have ColdFusion Components (CFCs). Using objects doesn't require OOP, and not every use of objects is OOP. They are simply the building blocks for writing OOP code.
When you write a lot of OOP code, you'll quickly find yourself writing repetitive code to wire together everything necessary to respond to a given request; if you take some time to write a single path through the code that analyzes the request and autom