What do you understand by Object and Class?

Object: Object is the instance of the classes. The object is a bundle of software containing related
variables and methods. It contains data and code to operate on those data (functions). Objects are the basic run-time entities of the programming, based on object-orientation. These are the central entities behind the object-oriented programming approach. It may be a person, place, or any data item. It may be any item that the program has to handle.

Classes: A class describes a group of objects with similar properties, common behavior, and common relationships to other objects. It is a collection of objects of similar types. It is a user-defined data type that can be used, just like any other basic data type, to declare variables. The class variables are known as objects or instances of a class, which are the central idea of the object-oriented programming approach.

 

 

Object and any thing exist in the world that is either living or non-living. For e.g. a pen, a book etc. An object is an instance of a class. A class is a group of similar objects. for example Animal is a class and cat, dog, cow etc are the objects of the Animal class.

At the most abstract level, a class is a definition/blueprint that specifies what its instances should contain and how they behave. An object is an instance of the class where every object has its state, while behaviour comes from the class definition.
As we look a little deeper, every object derives its state and behaviour from the class definition hierarchy (a.k.a inheritance). One can visualize it as an onion where each layer/peel corresponds to a class in the hierarchy.