Chapter 5 ▪ Inheritance
Chapter 4 introduced you to classes and objects. In this chapter, you will learn about inheritance, another fundamental concept of object-oriented programming. The idea behind inheritance is that you can create new classes that are built on existing classes. When you inherit from an existing class, you reuse (or inherit) its methods, and you can add new methods and fields to adapt your new class to new situations. This technique is essential in Java programming.
This chapter also covers reflection, the ability to find out more about classes and their properties in a running program. Reflection is a powerful feature, but it is undeniably complex. Since reflection is of greater interest to tool builders than to application ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access