Except, once you are done, you probably never have to touch that code again, and creating a class does not really take long. Depending on the given problem, th

Except, once you are done, you probably never have to touch that code again, and creating a class does not really take long. Depending on the given problem, this is sometimes more time consuming, but still gets easier and faster with practice, and the benefit down the road can be tremendous. Associative arrays are bad even for such simple things imo, because it breaks autocompletion / code inspections, and your functions are then these blackboxes that are hard to understand without looking at the implementation (code). Sometimes this is also evident when it's just you working on the code; try leaving the code for a few months only to return at it, and waste time relearning how to use your own code, because it is not self-documenting, and you can also forget- or misspell an array key. Etc. This is not the case if you define data types as objects instead of using arrays. I learned this from trial and error myself, and I used to use associative arrays a lot for things – now I find myself using/creating objects more often, and I just love returning to this code later, and have it work without too much crapping around.