Inheritance in .NET

Introduction

Inheritance is a fundamental concept in object-oriented programming. It allows you to create new classes that inherit properties and methods from existing classes, promoting code reusability and organization.

Key benefits: Reusability, Maintainability, Polymorphism (many forms of the same thing).

Key Concepts

• Base Class (Parent Class): The class that provides the initial properties and methods.
• Derived Class (Child Class): Inherits properties and methods from the base class.
• Method Overriding: A derived class provides its own implementation of a method inherited from the base class.
• Polymorphism: The ability of objects of different classes to respond to the same method call in different ways.

Examples

Let's illustrate with a simple example:

                
                public class Animal
                {
                    public string name;

                    public Animal(string name)
                    {
                        this.name = name;
                    }
                }

                
                class Dog : Animal
                {
                    public string breed;

                    public Dog(string name, string breed)
                    {
                        this.name = name;
                        this.breed = breed;
                    }
                }

                
                class Cat : Animal
                {
                    public string color;

                    public Cat(string name, string color)
                    {
                        this.name = name;
                        this.color = color;
                    }
                }