CS 121 Lecture Notes - Lecture 44: Pickup Truck, Multiple Inheritance, Unified Modeling Language
1 Mar 2017
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Inheritance: the process in which a new class is derived from an existing one. Via inheritance, the new class will automatically contain the variables & methods from the original class. To tailor the class then, as needed, the programmer can add new variables & methods that to the derived class or modify the inherited ones. Inheritance supports the idea of software rescue, which is by using existing software components to create new ones, we are then capitalizing on the efforts that went into the design, implementation, and testing of the existing software. The original class that is used to derive a new one is called the parent class, superclass or the base class. The derived class is called a child class or a subclass. Java uses the reserved word extends to indicate that a new class has been derived from an existing class.
