Inheritance

Abstract

Inheritance is a form of software reusability in which programmers create classes that “inherit” an existing class’s data and behaviors and enhance them with new capabilities. Software reusability saves time during application development. It also encourages the reuse of proven and debugged high-quality software, which increases the likelihood that a system will be implemented effectively. When creating a class, instead of writing completely new data members and member functions, the programmer can designate that the new class should inherit the members of the existing class. The existing class is called the base class, and the new class that is derived from the base class is called the derived class. In Java and the JavaFX scripting language, a base class is called a superclass and the derived class is called a subclass.