🧱 Introduction to Inheritance

Inheritance is a core concept in object-oriented programming (OOP) that allows classes to inherit properties and methods from other classes. This promotes code reusability and establishes a relationship between parent and child classes.

  • Parent Class (Superclass): Defines common attributes and behaviors.
  • Child Class (Subclass): Inherits and can extend or override functionality.
  • 📌 Example: A Vehicle class can be the superclass for Car, Bike, and Truck.

💡 Use extends keyword to create inheritance relationships.
📘 Learn more about class hierarchies

🧱 Introduction to Polymorphism

Polymorphism means "many forms" and allows objects to take multiple forms. It enables methods to do different things based on the object it is acting upon.

  • Method Overriding: Reimplementing a method in a subclass with the same name as the superclass.
  • Method Overloading: Having multiple methods with the same name but different parameters.
  • 📌 Example: A draw() method can behave differently for Circle, Square, and Triangle.

🌟 Polymorphism enhances flexibility and extensibility in code.
📘 Explore polymorphism examples

🖼️ Visual Concepts

Inheritance
Polymorphism

🧠 Practical Application

// Inheritance Example
class Animal {
    void speak() {
        System.out.println("Animal sound");
    }
}

class Dog extends Animal {
    @Override
    void speak() {
        System.out.println("Bark!");
    }
}

// Polymorphism Example
Animal myAnimal = new Dog();
myAnimal.speak(); // Outputs: Bark!

📌 Key Takeaways

  • Inheritance simplifies code structure by reusing existing classes.
  • Polymorphism allows for dynamic method binding and flexible design.
  • 🧩 Use inheritance to model "is-a" relationships and polymorphism for "is-treatable-as" relationships.

🚀 Ready to practice? Try coding exercises on inheritance and polymorphism