To approach this from a slightly different angle, this concept is important in computer programming.

In a lot of languages, the programmer can decide what attributes make an object "equal to" another object.

For example, if you have two "People" objects represented by "first name", "last name" and "address"; you could choose to say that if the first and last names are the same, then the two objects are "equal" (i.e. they represent the same person), despite the differing addresses.

Those two people objects wouldn't be "the same", however, unless you were looking at exactly the same objects in memory - in which case everything about them would be identical, because there would only be one Person object (even if you're looking at it using two different pointers).

To approach this from a slightly different angle, this concept is important in computer programming.

In a lot of languages, the programmer can decide what attributes make an object "equal to" another object.

For example, if you have two "People" objects represented by "first name", "last name" and "address"; you could choose to say that if the first and last names are the same, then the two objects are "equal" (i.e. they represent the same person), despite the differing addresses.

Those two people objects wouldn't be "the same", however, unless you were looking at exactly the same objects in memory - in which case everything about them would be identical, because there would only be one Person object (even if you're looking at it using two different pointers).

As Bill points out in the comments, if two objects are "the same", then a change to one will change the other; whereas if they are just Equal but not the same, then changing one won't affect the other (and may in fact make them not equal any more, depending on the change)

To approach this from a slightly different angle, this concept is important in computer programming.

In a lot of languages, the programmer can decide what attributes make an object "equal to" another object.

For example, if you have two "People" represented by "first name", "last name" and "address"; you could choose to say that if the first and last names are the same, then they are "equal", despite the differing addresses.

Those two people wouldn't be "the same", however, unless you were looking at exactly the same objects in memory.

To approach this from a slightly different angle, this concept is important in computer programming.

In a lot of languages, the programmer can decide what attributes make an object "equal to" another object.

For example, if you have two "People" objects represented by "first name", "last name" and "address"; you could choose to say that if the first and last names are the same, then the two objects are "equal" (i.e. they represent the same person), despite the differing addresses.

Those two people objects wouldn't be "the same", however, unless you were looking at exactly the same objects in memory - in which case everything about them would be identical, because there would only be one Person object (even if you're looking at it using two different pointers).