What is a Class
Many novice programmers when exposed for the first time in Object Oriented
Programming tend to confuse classes and object. To aid the programmer about
classes and object, this will give you some reminders. Your users will never see a
class; rather, they will only see and act with objects created from your
classes. As a programmer, your point of view is opposite because the thing you'll have in front of you while you're writing the application
is the class, in the form of a class module.
Until you run the application, an object isn't more real than a variable
declared with a Dim statement in a code listing.
A class is a part of the program that defines the properties, methods and
events of one or more object that will be created during execution. An object is
an entity created at run time, which requires memory and some resources and is then destroyed when it's no longer needed or when the application
end. In short, a class are design time only entities, while object are run-time
entities. Or in more or less technical term
A class is a template or formal definitions that defines the properties of an
object and the methods used to control that object's behavior. The description
of these members is done only once, in the definition of the class. The object
that belongs to a class, called instance of the class, share the code of the
class to which they belong but contain only their particular setting for the
properties of the class. Everything an object knows is expressed in its
properties and everything it can do is expressed in its methods. Object
interacts with each other by sending message requesting that method be carried
out, or that properties be set or returned. A message is simply the name of an
object followed by the name of one of its members.