The difference between Classes, Objects, and Instances

Question

What is a class, an object and an instance in Java?

Answer 1

The definition "Object is an instance of a class", is conceptually wrong, but correct as per implementation. Actually the object oriented features are taken from the real life, for focusing the mind of programmer from more to less. In real life classes are designed to manage the object.For eg- we human beings have a caste, religion,nationality and much more. These casts, religion, nationality are the classes and have no existence without human beings. But in implementation there is no existence of objects without classes. Object- Object is an discrete entity having some well defined attribute. Here discrete mean something that makes it unique from other. Well defined attribute make sense in some context. Class- Classification of object having some common behaviour or objects of some common type.